Ailyn Pérez to star on “Live From Lincoln Center,” December 13

Soprano Ailyn Pérez, winner of the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, was fresh from a string of European appearances, including her Bolshoi Theater debut and performances at the Hamburg State Opera, when she lit up the stage at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall at theRichard Tucker Music Foundation’s annual gala on November 11. The gala was filmed for national broadcast in the U.S. as part of the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center series on PBS and will air on Thursday, December 13. Live from Lincoln Center: The Richard Tucker Opera Gala, which is being hosted by singer and actress Audra McDonald, will include a feature on Pérez, backstage access to the artists, and selections from the musical performance.
 
Reporting on the Tucker Gala, the New York Timessaid:
 
“This year’s winner of the Rickard Tucker Award is Ailyn Pérez, a fast-rising lyric soprano who was featured in three performances. Though Ms. Pérez has not yet appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, she has been thriving in major houses in Vienna, London, Berlin, Milan and at the Salzburg Festival. … Ms. Pérez brought a gleaming voice and agile coloratura technique to Manon’s brilliant arioso and coyly seductive gavotte (‘Obéissons quand leur voix appelle’). Her voice has a distinctive timbre, with plaintive richness blended into its youthful bloom … Ms. Pérez, a beautiful woman who commands the stage, has the makings of a major soprano.”
 
The Associated Press reported, “The creamy elegance of her sound was heard to advantage in the “Cherry Duet” from Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz and the finale to Act 2 of Verdi’s La Traviata.”
 
Not one to rest on her laurels, Pérez flew to Florida immediately after the gala to continue rehearsing for La bohème. The production opened the Florida Grand Opera season just six days later, on November 17, to rave reviews. South Florida Classical Review commented:
 
“At the season-opening performance of Puccini’s La bohème Saturday night, FGO delivered a moving, passionate performance with one of the finest sopranos to sing with the company in many years. Ailyn Pérez, who sings the role of Mimì, performed last week in a gala concert at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall as winner of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award for young singers. The Chicago-born soprano sings with a warm lyricism that’s perfect for the role of Puccini’s gentle, loving, tubercular seamstress. Her evenly produced, well-focused voice projects effortlessly. Pérez spun long lines of soft melody as she introduces herself to the poet Rodolfo in Sì, mi chiamano Mimì and when she says she will leave him in Donde lieta uscì, the soprano rose to a passage of soaring lyricism as she tells her lover to keep her pink bonnet as a memory of their love. Throughout the evening, she never disappointed, wringing all the emotion from the moments of grand passion, from her desire for winter to last forever so they would never leave each other to her feverish dying expressions of love for Rodolfo.”
 
Pérez will return to Hamburg State Opera to sing the role of Violetta in a new production of La traviata(Feb 17-March 19) by cutting-edge German director Johannes Erath, whose recent stagings include Massenet’s Cendrillon in Bern, Peter Eötvös’s Angels in America for Oper Frankfurt, and Orfeo ed Euridice andAida at Cologne Opera. Last season, Pérez stepped in for a performance as Violetta at Covent Garden, a role she performed there earlier in the season, opposite her husband, tenor Stephen Costello, on two days’ notice, winning her raves like this one from The Observer:“The bewitching young American soprano puts her heart into every twist of the drama, from the impetuousness of her love for Alfredo…to the febrile emergency of her death. Her performance was glorious, the quiet passages magical.”
 
In March, Pérez travels to Austria to take on Donizetti’s impetuous Adina in Otto Schenk’s production of L’elisir d’amore at the Vienna State Opera, opposite the Nemorino of Costello (March 1-8). She stays in Europe for her much-anticipated debut at England’s storied Glyndebourne Festival this summer as Alice Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. These Glydebourne performances also mark her role debut as one of the objects of Sir John Falstaff’s mis-guided affection. Mark Elder conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and a cast that also features Laurent Naouri in the title role, Roman Burdenko as Ford, and Lucia Cirillo as Meg Page. The production, by Richard Jones, debuted at Glyndebourne in 2009 to rave reviews and was released on DVD by Opus Arte.
 
Ailyn Pérez is a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, Philadelphia and of Indiana University. In addition to winning the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, she is a recipient of the George London Foundation’s Leonie Rysanek Award, a 2007 winner of a Shoshana Foundation Career Grant, placed second in the 2006 Plácido Domingo Operalia competition, and was previously lauded by the Loren L. Zachary Foundation, Opera Index and the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation.
 
 
Ailyn Pérez: selected 2012-13 engagements
 
Nov 17, 20, 23, 25 & 28; Dec 1, 6 & 8
Miami, FL
Florida Grand Opera
Puccini: La bohème (Mimì)
 
Feb 17, 20; Mar 15, 19
Hamburg, Germany
Hamburg State Opera
Verdi: La traviata (Violetta) / new production
 
Mar 1, 4 & 8
Vienna, Austria
Vienna State Opera
Donizetti: L’elisir d’amore (Adina)
 
May 19, 24, 26 & 29; Jun 1, 6, 9, 15, 22 & 27; July 4, 9 & 14
Lewes, England
Glyndebourne
Verdi: Falstaff (Alice Ford) / role and house debut
 
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