Soprano Angela Meade headlines first staged “Norma” at WNO (March 9–24)
Following her sold-out recital debut at Washington’s Kennedy Center last November, Angela Meade – winner of the 2011 Richard Tucker and 2012 Beverly Sills Awards – returns to the venue to headline her first fully-staged Norma in a new Washington National Opera production from Anne Bogart (March 9–24). In concert, the young soprano has already been hailed as “a brilliant new interpreter of Norma” (New York Post), whose “stunning Norma was the big news” (New York Times) of the 2010 Caramoor International Music Festival. For her return to Caramoor this summer, Meade – a “true Verdian spinto” (Opera News) – graces Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes, while his I Lombardi is the vehicle for her upcoming Lincoln Center performance with the Opera Orchestra of New York (April 8). Appearances as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at Cincinnati Opera (June 13 & 15) and as soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Manfred Honeck (April 26–28) round out the soprano’s spring and early summer line-up.
While the Washington National Opera’s new production marks Meade’s first fully staged performances of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece, Norma has already played an integral part in her burgeoning career. In her Caramoor concert performance, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times found her to be “in complete command of the role, delivering the character’s charged, defiant dramatic recitative with gleaming sound and incisive attack”; Capital New York affirmed that “Meade [was] the kind of singer you should be building productions around”; while in the New Yorker, an awestruck Alex Ross observed:
“Meade is astounding. … She is a very musical singer, naturally and intelligently riding the phrase. Her tone has a distinct character, slightly darker than the coloratura norm yet warmly glowing. She doesn’t seem to make her voice do things; it is doing what it was born to do. … A formidable achievement.”
As Opera News reported, it was not only the critics who were impressed by the soprano’s interpretation: her performance “brought her ovation after ovation from an audience thrilled to hear the role sung with such aplomb.”
At the Kennedy Center, Meade undertakes Bellini’s notoriously challenging title role opposite the formidable mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick as Norma’s rival, Adalgisa, and Rafael Davila as Pollione, with Daniele Rustioni on the podium. Washington National Opera’s new production is from contemporary theater director Anne Bogart, winner of two “Best Director” Obies.
It was in the title role of a less familiar Bellini opera, Beatrice di Tenda, that Meade “again proved herself a singer of uncommon gifts” (New York Times) in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall last December. The soprano returns to New York for another opera-in-concert, this time at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where she joins tenor Michael Fabiano for Verdi’s I Lombardi with the Opera Orchestra of New York under Eve Queler (April 8).
Meade’s Verdi track record is a stellar one. After her first staged Il trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera in January, including an international radio broadcast of the Saturday matinee, the Associated Press’s Mike Silverman declared:
“The young American demonstrated once again that she has all the gifts to be an outstanding spinto soprano — a category between the lighter lyric and the heavier dramatic voice. She filled the house with ample, gleaming tone, and rose to all the technical challenges of the role: Runs, trills and high pianissimos were executed with agility and confidence.”
And to the question, “Could Meade be the next great Verdian soprano?” the Baltimore Sun’s Tim Smith responded, “I might take that bet.”
It is also in the great Italian composer’s work that Meade will return to the Caramoor International Music Festival this summer, where she made such an impact three years ago. Besides performing Verdi’s Ave Maria, volgarizzata da Dante with string quartet on June 27, she looks forward to heading a semi-staged performance of Les vêpres siciliennes in the original French, with Will Crutchfield and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s on July 6. It was in the opera’s later and more familiar Italian iteration that Meade opened the current season in her debut at the Vienna Staatsoper. According to Die Presse, “she encompassed with astonishing mastery the extreme vocal range of the role, with the required breadth of both lyrical and dramatic coloratura,” while the Kurier confirmed, “Meade portrays the Duchess Elena with her generously endowed soprano, including elegant coloratura and a remarkable range in a memorable house debut.”
Details of Angela Meade’s upcoming performances are provided below, and additional information is available at www.angelameade.com.
Angela Meade: upcoming engagements
March 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 & 24; Washington, D.C.
Bellini: Norma (title role; new production)
Washington National Opera / Daniele Rustioni
April 8; New York, NY
Verdi: I Lombardi (Giselda)
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center
Opera Orchestra of New York / Eve Queler
April 26, 27 & 28; Pittsburgh, PA
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Pittsburgh Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh / Manfred Honeck
June 13 & 15; Cincinnati, OH
Mozart: Don Giovanni (Donna Anna)
Cincinnati Opera / Roberto Minczuk
June 27; Katonah, NY
Caramoor International Music Festival
Verdi: Ave Maria, volgarizzata da Dante (1880) for soprano and strings
With Jesse Mills, violin; Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Edward Arron, cello
July 6; Katonah, NY
Caramoor International Music Festival
Verdi: Les vêpres siciliennes (French version)
Orchestra of St. Luke’s / Will Crutchfield
www.angelameade.com
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