Discovery Day: Benjamin Britten

Performers

• Paul Kildea, Keynote Speaker
• John Bridcut, Speaker
• Joélle Harvey, Soprano
• Emalie Savoy, Soprano
• Paul Appleby, Tenor
• John Brancy, Baritone
• Natalia Katyukova, Piano

Program

All-Britten recital to include selections from Hölderlin Fragments, On this Island, Poet’s Echo, Winter Words, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, Sonnets of Michelangelo, and other works

Event Duration

Bios

• Paul Kildea

   

  A former young artist at Opera Australia, Paul Kildea has conducted throughout Australia and Europe, including guest appearances with the Slovak Philharmonic, Ensemble 2e2m (Paris), The Nash Ensemble of London, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Philharmoniker Hamburg, Opera Australia, Victorian Opera (Melbourne), Australian Youth Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Britten-Pears Orchestra. During a four-year appointment as head of music at the Aldeburgh Festival, he conducted and programmed a broad repertory. In addition to Aldeburgh, he has held artistic posts with Perth Festival of the Arts and London's Wigmore Hall, where he was artistic director. He is currently artistic director of Four Winds Festival on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.
  
  Dr. Kildea holds degrees in piano performance and musicology from The University of Melbourne, where he is now an honorary principal fellow, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford. His books include Selling Britten and Britten on Music. In January 2013, Penguin published his major new biography, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, to considerable critical acclaim.

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• John Bridcut

  
  John Bridcut is a documentary filmmaker for British television. His sequence of award-winning composer films began with Britten's Children in 2004. This exploration of Benjamin Britten's music for children received an award at the Golden Prague International Television Festival. It was followed by The Passions of Vaughan Williams, which won best documentary at France's International Festival of Audiovisual Programs; Elgar: The Man Behind the Mask, which won an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and also the Czech Crystal award at Golden Prague; and Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma. In his latest film, Britten's Endgame, Mr. Bridcut has returned to the subject of Benjamin Britten for the composer's centenary. He has also written two books on Britten for Faber and Faber-Britten's Children and Essential Britten-and his two Britten films have now been issued on DVD by Decca.
  
  Mr. Bridcut's other film portraits include pieces on Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Colin Davis, Rudolf Nureyev (shown on PBS in 2007), Roald Dahl, Hillary Clinton, Prince Charles, and Queen Elizabeth II. His documentary A Jubilee Tribute to the Queen by the Prince of Wales featured unique footage from the Queen's home movies and was shown on BBC Television last year to an audience of more than 10 million people in the UK. It has since been shown in the US under the title Royal Memories and in countries all over the world. Mr. Bridcut recently made Requiem, a survey of musical requiems from the days of plainchant to Krzysztof Penderecki.

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• Joélle Harvey

  
  Joélle Harvey's 2013-2014 season includes her debut with London's Royal Opera House as Sicle in Ormindo, Serpetta in La finta giardiniera with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Adina in L'elisir d'amore with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and Miranda in Death and the Powers with The Dallas Opera, as well as appearances on the concert stage with the Handel and Haydn Society (Dalila in Handel's Samson), New York Philharmonic (Handel's Messiah), San Francisco Symphony (Beethoven's Mass in C), Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Schubert's Mass No. 6), and Kansas City Symphony (Handel's Messiah).
  
  During the 2012-2013 season, Ms. Harvey sang Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera and with Arizona Opera; made two appearances with the San Francisco Symphony (Handel's Messiah, conducted by Ragnar Bohlin, and music from Peer Gynt, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas); performed the role of Tigrane in performances of Radamisto at Carnegie Hall and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Harry Bicket and The English Concert; appeared as soloist in the Mendelssohn Magnificat and Bach Magnificat for her debut with the New York Philharmonic; and sang Iphis in a US tour of Handel's Jephtha with Harry Christophers and the Handel and Haydn Society. She concluded the season in a return to the Aix-en-Provence Festival for Zerlina in a revival of Dmitri Tcherniakov's production of Don Giovanni, conducted by Marc Minkowski.
  
  Ms. Harvey is the recipient of a 2011 first prize in the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition, a 2009 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, and a 2010 Encouragement Award (in honor of Norma Newton) from the George London Foundation.

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• Emalie Savoy

  
  Rising American soprano Emalie Savoy made her Metropolitan Opera debut during the 2011-2012 season as Kristina in Janáček's The Makropulos Case. In recognition of her outstanding artistic achievement and potential, she was the recipient of a 2012 Hildegard Behrens Foundation Young Artist Humanitarian Award.
  
  Engagements in the 2012-2013 season included the role of Countess Ceprano in the Met's new production of Verdi's Rigoletto (broadcast as part of the Live in HD series and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon); a radio broadcast performance of Mozart's "Bella mia fiamma" with the Munich Radio Orchestra; a performance of Wolf's Mignon Lieder at Steingraeber & Söhne in Bayreuth, Germany; soprano soloist in Britten's War Requiem, conducted by Kent Tritle with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall; a duo recital with tenor Anthony Dean Griffey and pianist Ken Noda at The Morgan Library & Museum as a result of being named a 2011 George London Competition Grand Prize recipient; and the role of Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, conducted by Alan Gilbert in a co-production by the Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School.
  
  Other highlights of recent seasons have included the role of Socrates in Satie's Socrate with James Levine conducting the MET Chamber Ensemble in Zankel Hall; the title role in Gluck's Armide, conducted by Jane Glover in a co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and The Juilliard School; and the role of Ariadne in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010.
  
  A native of Albany, New York, Ms. Savoy is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and holds bachelor's and master's degrees from The Juilliard School.

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• Paul Appleby

  
  A dynamic and versatile artist, American tenor Paul Appleby is an admired and exciting presence on the world's leading concert, recital, and opera stages. A recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and the recipient of a 2012 Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts, Mr. Appleby counts among his performance credits appearances with the Metropolitan Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Wolf Trap Opera, and concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, to name a few.
  
  Mr. Appleby's 2013-2014 operatic engagements include debuts with the Santa Fe Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and Washington National Opera, and return engagements at the Metropolitan Opera and Oper Frankfurt. Concert performances include performances with New York's Maverick Concerts and the New York Philharmonic, a recital at Pace University, and a joint recital with baritone Joshua Hopkins presented by the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
  
  Mr. Appleby's 2012-2013 season highlights included singing the Chevalier de la Force in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites and Hylas in Berlioz's Les Troyens for the Metropolitan Opera, and Ferrando in Così fan tutte for Boston Lyric Opera. Symphonic appearances included performances of Mozart's Requiem with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
  
  Mr. Appleby has been recognized with the 2012 Top Prize of the Gerda Lissner Foundation International Vocal Competition, the 2012 Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, a 2011  Richard Tucker Career Grant and George London Foundation Award, and was a national winner of the 2009 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

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• John Brancy

  
  John Brancy's 2013-2014 season brings debut performances with Oper Frankfurt as Sonora in La fanciulla del West, Gotham Chamber Opera in Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux Enfers, and Pacific Opera Victoria as Harlekin in Ariadne auf Naxos. His concert and recital engagements for the year include performances with the Saskatoon and Regina symphony orchestras, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Brooklyn Art Song Society. Future seasons include a debut with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera.
  
  During the 2012-2013 season, Mr. Brancy made his debut with the Dresden Semperoper, singing the role of Fiorello in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, performed Mike in a new production of John Adams's I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky at Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet, and concluded his time with Juilliard Opera as Harasta in The Cunning Little Vixen. Additionally, Mr. Brancy closed the season performing the role of Papageno in Die Zauberflöte at the prestigious Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. He is a 2013 George London Foundation Encouragement Award winner.
  
  While still an undergraduate student at The Juilliard School, Mr. Brancy made his Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall debuts as the baritone soloist in Fauré's Requiem, Mozart's Coronation Mass, and Schubert's Mass in G, among other notable works. He has given recitals throughout Europe and North America, and has appeared frequently in concert with New York Festival of Song, including several concerts at the Caramoor International Music Festival. He was also the winner of the 2010 Juilliard School Honors Recital Competition. In the following year, he made his Alice Tully Hall Songfest debut, collaborating with Brian Zeger.

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