Mezzo Susan Graham Is “Live From Lincoln Center” on Dec 31
On December 31, Grammy
Award-winning mezzo Susan Graham will join Maestro Lorin Maazel and the New
York Philharmonic for the orchestra’s New Year’s Eve gala, which will be
broadcast nationally on PBS TV’s “Live From Lincoln Center”. Susan Graham
will sing, among other items, the two principal arias from Bizet’s Carmen, the “Habanera” and
“Seguidilla”. Ms. Graham will also
sing arias from two of her signature roles, Sesto in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and The Merry Widow
of Lehár’s popular operetta of the same name.
Susan Graham’s final concert of 2008 ends a year
of triumphs in concert, recital, recording, and on the opera stage. She was featured on the cover of two
international music magazines in November (Opera News and BBC Music),
and took on her second new role of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-09 season on
November 7, when she portrayed the innocent and doomed Marguérite in La
damnation de Faust. The new
production of this four-character “dramatic legend” was Ms. Graham’s second
opera and second new role in the house this fall (she made her company debut as
Mozart’s Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in September). At the opening night celebrations for La Damnation de Faust at the Met, Susan Graham
was decorated by the French government as Commandeur in the “Ordre des Arts et
des Lettres”, France’s highest honor in the arts.
Ms. Graham kicked off 2008 by singing Berlioz
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic and by performing
an extensive recital tour with her regular collaborator Malcolm Martineau. She soared in the role of Sesto in
Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the
Met and sang the title role in Handel’s Ariodante
at the San Francisco Opera. In
May, her performances of Berlioz’s La
mort de Cléopâtre with Simon Rattle and the Berlin
Philharmonic were recorded for EMI Classics and will be released in early 2009.
When not singing, Susan Graham has acted as host
for many broadcasts and live events.
She was the host for the Emmy Award-winning “Live From Lincoln Center”
telecast of Madama Butterfly from the
New York City Opera, and elegantly hosted the opening night of the Met’s 125th
anniversary season for local movie and open-air audiences in the season’s first
Live in HD transmission.
She also hosted the HD broadcasts of John Adams’s Dr. Atomic and last season’s Tristan
und Isolde. Ms. Graham opened
this season as host of both the National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors
and the Opera News Awards.
Susan
Graham’s newest CD, Un frisson français,
earns high praise
Susan Graham’s latest CD, Un frisson français, was recently featured in a BBC Music cover story for the magazine’s
“Special Issue on French music.”
London’s Sunday Times named the disc one of the “Best
CDs of 2008,” calling it “one of the most delicious
surprises of the year,” while the Denver Post selected it as one of the “10 Classical Albums That
Mattered In 2008.”
“The program I have recorded with Malcolm
Martineau is a really rich variety of French mélodies over a
hundred-year span, from the mid-19th to mid-20th
century. It’s a rich tapestry –
from Bizet to Poulenc – and it provides a delicious variety of romantic, saucy,
lush, humorous, and offbeat songs,” explains Susan Graham. “I wasn’t familiar with many of them
before I learned them for my recital tour in 2007, including Fauré’s rarely
heard “Vocalise-étude”, but I have truly fallen in love with each one. Some are heartbreaking; some are
dramatic – almost operatic – in scope, like Bachelet’s “Chère nuit”. Some are little brush-strokes, and some
create a whole landscape. There
are animal songs, nature songs, love songs, songs about love manqué, and
some subtle French humor thrown in for fun. They make up a varied and rich program. If they were food and you were in a
restaurant, these songs would be the entire appetizer menu, and you’d have to
order them all.”
For more information about Un frisson français, please visit: onyxclassics.com.
For more information about Susan Graham and a
full performance schedule, please visit:
New Year’s Eve Gala: PBS
“Live From Lincoln Center”
December
31; Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, New York, NY
New
York Philharmonic
Lorin
Maazel, conductor