James Levine
James Levine conducts three operas at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009–2010, including the new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann and revivals of Simon Boccanegra and Lulu. He and the MET Orchestra are heard in two concerts at Carnegie Hall this season (the soloists are Stephanie Blythe and Diana Damrau), while Pierre Boulez conducts the third date in the subscription series (with Deborah Polaski in May); Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble give two performances in Weill and Zankel halls, featuring the music of Boulez, Mozart, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Strauss.
Maestro Levine leads the Boston Symphony in two programs at Carnegie Hall in coming months with soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard (in music of Ravel and Carter) and Christine Brewer, Stephanie Blythe, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Shenyang, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (in Mendelssohn’s Elijah). His sixth season as Music Director of the BSO began on September 23 and includes world premieres of commissions from Peter Lieberson, John Harbison, and John Williams; the US premiere of Carter’s Flute Concerto; his first performances with the BSO of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony; and a special Pension Fund concert in February that features music of “all four Strausses”: waltzes and polkas of Johann Sr., Jr., and Josef, as well as Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote. The BSO recently released the first five in a new series of recordings made in live performances in Symphony Hall, including Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony and “Lyric Concerto,” Brahms’s German Requiem, and a two-CD collection of Mozart symphonies.
James Levine makes his debut in March with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Mahler’s Third Symphony in the German capital (as well as a gala four-hand piano evening with that orchestra’s Artistic Director, Daniel Barenboim, and Dorothea Röschmann, Waltraud Meier, Matthew Polenzani, and René Pape, for the benefit of the Deutsche Staatsoper’s imminent renovation), and will help celebrate Cincinnati Opera’s 90th Anniversary in June, leading a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in his hometown before returning to the BSO’s Tanglewood Festival (July 9–August 4).
Participating Artists
Lori Guilbeau, Soprano, 24
Hometown: Golden Meadow, LA
Education: M.M., Manhattan School of Music (current); B.M., Manhattan School of Music
Awards: Beverly Sills Award, Elardo International Opera Competition
Recent: Pénélope (Pénélope), Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater; recital, Schwabacher Series / Merola Opera Program; Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Shreveport Opera
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