CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Performance Friday, Feb 24, 2012 | 7:30 PM

Erin Morley
Vlad Iftinca

Weill Recital Hall Seating Chart
For Erin Morley, last season was what she called “the year of the Queen”: She wowed audiences in Santa Fe, Frankfurt, and Dresden as the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. This season, the regal, young soprano appears in Robert Lepage’s new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera—and gives a recital of songs by Haydn, Rossini, Schubert, and others at Carnegie Hall.

Performers

  • Erin Morley, Soprano
  • Vlad Iftinca, Piano

Program

  • SCHUMANN "Der Sandmann," Op. 79, No. 12
  • SCHUMANN "Des Sennen Abschied," Op. 79, No. 22
  • SCHUMANN "Liebeslied," Op. 51, No. 5
  • ROSSINI "Mi lagnerò tacendo"
  • ROSSINI "La fioraja fiorentina"
  • BARBER Four Songs, Op. 13
    ·· A Nun Takes the Veil
    ·· The Secrets of the Old
    ·· Sure on this shining night
    ·· Nocturne
  • RACHMANINOFF Six Songs, Op. 38
    ·· In my Garden at Night
    ·· To Her
    ·· Daisies
    ·· The Rat-Catcher
    ·· A Dream
    ·· A-u!

  • Encore:
  • SCHUMANN "Der Himmel hat ein’ Träne geweint," Op. 37, No. 1

Bios

  • Erin Morley


    Erin Morley is one of today's most promising lyric coloratura sopranos. She made her breakthrough performance as Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots at the Bard SummerScape to great critical acclaim.

    For the 2011-2012 season, Ms. Morley returns to the Metropolitan Opera for three of Robert Lepage's new Ring cycle productions: She sings the roles of Woglinde in Das Rheingold, the Woodbird in Siegfried, and Woglinde in Götterdämmerung. On the concert stage, she performs Carmina Burana with the New York Philharmonic and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the Utah Symphony, and Bach cantatas with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In addition, Ms. Morley also sings and records Nielsen's Symphony No. 3 with the New York Philharmonic. In the summer of 2012, Ms. Morley will sing the role of Roxana in a new production of King Roger with Santa Fe Opera. Upcoming engagements include principal roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra national de Paris, and Vienna and Bavarian state operas.

    Ms. Morley's recent roles include the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte with the Santa Fe Opera, and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos with Wolf Trap Opera Company. Recent concert highlights include performances of Berg's Lulu Suitewith The Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst; Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bernard Haitink; Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem with the Collegiate Chorale and James Bagwell; Webern's Four Songs with pianist Ken Noda; and Satie's Socrate with The MET Chamber Ensemble and James Levine.

    A 2010 graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, Ms. Morley has sung several roles at the Met Opera, including Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, the Dew Fairy in Hänsel und Gretel, and the Daughter in The Nose. Ms. Morley completed her artist diploma at the Juilliard Opera Center in 2007, where she received the Florence & Paul DeRosa Prize. She earned her master's degree from The Juilliard School and her bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music. She won first place in the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation Competition in 2006, and third place in London's Wigmore Hall / Kohn Foundation International Song Competition in 2009.

    More Info

  • Vlad Iftinca


    Vlad Iftinca is currently serving on the 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera music staff roster and is also the staff music coach for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Born in Romania, he received his primary education at Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía and the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid. He pursued additional studies at Mannes College The New School for Music and The Juilliard School.

    Mr. Iftinca has collaborated with distinguished singers such as Deborah Voigt, Hei-Kyung Hong, Thomas Hampson, Luca Pisaroni, Shenyang, and Isabel Leonard. Recent recital performances include appearances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Seoul Performing Arts Center, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Minnesota Beethoven Festival, and the Ravinia Festival's "Rising Stars" recital series. At the Met Opera, he has worked with prestigious conductors such as James Levine, Sir Andrew Davis, Valery Gergiev, and Marco Armiliato. Mr. Iftinca has been part of the music staff at the Renata Scotto Opera Academy in Westchester, New York. From 2004 to 2006, he collaborated with Regina Resnik Presents,performing in San Francisco and New York.

    More Info

At a Glance

A proud father, Robert Schumann wrote collections of piano works and songs for children. The program includes two of his best children’s songs from 1849, as well as an exquisite setting of a little-known text by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In the late-18th and early-19th centuries, composers often wrote scenas and concert arias for singers independent of full-length operas. Joseph Haydn wrote such an operatic scene for one of the era’s great singers, a soprano named Brigida Banti.

In the early 1830s, Gioachino Rossini wrote songs and duets for salons in Paris, the results published in 1836 as Soirées musicales; we hear two of his Italian songs. More than two decades later, he turned his hand to songs, chamber works, and shorter piano pieces collected under the whimsical title Sins of my old age.

In the late 1930s, French song composer Francis Poulenc first turned his hand to the poetry of Louise de Vilmorin, a writer whose beauty and complexity attracted many men. In Trois poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin, we hear two light and frothy songs followed by a grave prayer.

The 20th-century American composer Samuel Barber composed love songs to poems by the Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Irish genius William Butler Yeats, and American writers James Agee and Frederic Prokosch.

We end with composer-pianist Rachmaninoff’s last song opus before leaving Russia. For the rich Op. 38 songs, he turned to poetry by Russia’s newer symbolist poets.
Program Notes
This concert is made possible by The Ruth Morse Fund for Vocal Excellence.
This performance is part of the Great Singers III: Evenings of Song series.

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