CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS

Performance Friday, April 5, 2013 | 8 PM

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Daniele Gatti drew praise from audience members and critics alike when he led the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall’s Opening Night Gala in 2009. They return to the Carnegie Hall stage, performing Wagner with luminous mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung.

Performers

  • Boston Symphony Orchestra
    Daniele Gatti, Conductor
  • Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano

Program

ALL-WAGNER PROGRAM
  • Selections from Götterdämmerung
    ·· Dawn
    ·· Siegfried's Rhine Journey
    ·· Siegfried's Death and Funeral March
  • Overture to Tannhäuser
  • "Ich sah das Kind" from Parsifal
  • Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin
  • Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

Bios

  • Daniele Gatti


    Conductor Daniele Gatti has been music director of the Orchestre National de France since September 2008 and principal conductor of Zurich Opera since September 2009. He is also conductor laureate of the Royal Philharmonic, having been music director there from 1996 to 2009. Previously he was music director of Bologna's Teatro Comunale and Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and principal guest conductor of London's Royal Opera House. He enjoys close relationships with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and regularly conducts such leading orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Chicago and Boston symphony orchestras, Bayerische Rundfunk, Munich Philharmonic, and Philharmonia. He has conducted new productions at opera houses that include the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Bavarian State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Zurich Opera, and Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut with Madama Butterfly in 1994; he returned to the Met this past February for Parsifal. He conducted Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival every year between 2008 and 2011. In autumn 2013, he opens La Scala's new season with La traviata. In recent seasons at the Salzburg Festival, he has led Elektra and La bohème and a concert with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. He recently completed a European tour with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra that featured the four Brahms symphonies, to celebrate the bicentenary of the Society of the Vienna Friends of Music, of which Brahms was music director. Other recent and future engagements include concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, the completion of a Mahler cycle with Orchestre National de France, Parsifal in concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, an Italian tour with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, the opening of the MiTo Festival in Turin and Milan, and Boston Symphony Orchestra performances of Verdi's Requiem to mark the bicentennial of Verdi's birth.

     

    More Info

  • Michelle DeYoung

                                                                
    Michelle DeYoung appears with the world's leading conductors, orchestras, opera companies, and festivals. In opera, her many roles include Wagner's Fricka, Sieglinde, Waltraute, Kundry, Venus, and Brangäne; Dido in Les Troyens; Amneris in Aida; Eboli in Don Carlo; Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust; Judith in Bluebeard's Castle; Dalila in Samson et Dalila; Gertrude in Hamlet; Jocasta in Oedipus Rex; and Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia. She created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun's The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera. Recital appearances have included, among others, the University of Chicago Presents series, the Ravinia Festival, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the San Francisco Symphony's Great Performances series, Cal Performances in Berkeley, the Thèâtre du Châtelet, the Edinburgh Festival, London's Wigmore Hall, and La Monnaie in Brussels. Her recording of Kindertotenlieder and Mahler's Symphony No. 3 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS Media) was awarded the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album. She also received 2001 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording, for Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live). Her growing discography also includes Mahler's Symphony No. 3 with Bernard Haitink and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Bernstein's Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah," with the BBC Symphony under Leonard Slatkin; Das klagende Lied with Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony; and Das Lied von der Erde with the Minnesota Orchestra. This season, Ms. DeYoung makes return appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (in Boston and Carnegie Hall), Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra, and appears in Europe with the Finnish, Swedish, and Stockholm radio symphony orchestras; the Royal Flemish Philharmonic; the Staatskapelle Berlin; and Hamburg State Opera.

     

    More Info

Audio

Wagner's Götterdämmerung, Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey 

London Symphony Orchestra | Leopold Stokowski, Conductor

Decca

At a Glance

In an 1852 essay, Franz Liszt, who led the premiere of Lohengrin the previous year, made an observation that still resonates: "Wagner has always mixed a different palette for each of his main characters. The more attentively you study [his] latest score, the more you realize what an interdependence he has created between his text and his orchestra. Not only has he personified in his melodies the feelings and passions that he has set in train ... but it was also his wish that their basic features should be underlined by a corresponding orchestral coloring, and as he creates rhythms and melodies to fit the character of the people he portrays, so also he chooses the right kinds of sounds to go with them."

Tonight's concert celebrates the bicentennial of Wagner's birth with excerpts from five of the composer's operas, encompassing the themes of love, identity, and redemption that pervade his works. The program includes orchestral excerpts from Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the final opera of Wagner's gargantuan Ring cycle; the powerful Overture to Tannhäuser, one of his great early successes; Kundry's narrative ("Ich sah das Kind") from Act II of Wagner's moving final opera, Parsifal, whose title character attains spiritual transcendence as a Knight of the Holy Grail; the ethereal Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin, music embodying a vision of the Holy Grail itself; and the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, a 20-minute distillation of Wagner's four-hour paean to love.
Program Notes
United Logo 130 x 22
Sponsored by United, Official Airline of Carnegie Hall
The Trustees of Carnegie Hall gratefully acknowledge the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Solomon in support of the 2012-2013 season.
This performance is part of Great American Orchestras II, and Great Operas in Concert.