Music Director James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra return to Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on Monday, April 5, at 8:00 p.m. to perform Mendelssohn’s powerful oratorio, Elijah, in the orchestra’s fourth and final appearance of Carnegie Hall’s 2009–2010 season. Soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko, and bass-baritone Shenyang are soloists for this performance which also features the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The performances of Elijah in Boston and at Carnegie Hall mark the beginning of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus’s 40th anniversary celebration as the Boston Symphony Orchestras chorus. The Boston Symphony has performed Elijah only two times during its 129-year history. Seiji Ozawa led the orchestra's most recent performances of Elijah at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood in 1980, ninety-one years after the BSO's first performance of the work in 1889, in Pittsburgh, under the direction of J.P. McCullum.Artist Information
Grammy Award-winning American soprano Christine Brewer’s appearances in opera, concert, and recital are marked with her own unique timbre, which combined with her range, golden tone, boundless power, and control make her a favorite of the stage as well as a sought-after recording artist. Highlights of Ms. Brewer’s 2009-10 season include performances with the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, the Dallas Symphony and Jaap van Zweden, and excerpts from Wagner operas with the BBC Philharmonic and Donald Runnicles, as well as appearances with the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, and at the Ravinia Festival. This season also brings a highly anticipated reprisal of Ms. Brewer’s critically acclaimed portrayal of Lady Billows in Albert Herring at the Santa Fe Opera. An avid recitalist, Ms. Brewer will be heard on the stages throughout North America in venues such as Cal Performances, Spivey Hall, University Musical Society, the Schubert Club, the Baldwin-Wallace Art Song Festival, and in a presentation by the Los Angeles Philharmonic among others.
Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe has sung in many of the renowned opera houses in the U.S. and Europe including the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Opera National de Paris. Ms. Blythe has also appeared with many of the world's finest orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Orchestre de Paris. A frequent recitalist, Ms. Blythe has been presented in recital with her collaborative partner, Warren Jones, in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and on Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series at Alice Tully Hall, as well as at the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the US Supreme Court, at the invitation of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Ms. Blythe was named Musical America's 2009 Vocalist of the Year. Her other awards include the 2007 Opera News Award and the 1999 Richard Tucker Award. Ms. Blythe sang three roles (Frugola, La Principessa, and Zita) in Puccini’s Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera this past fall.
Tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko was born in Riga, Latvia, in June 1975. In 1998 he graduated from the Jazeps Medinš College of Music where he played wind instruments and studied singing. During his studies he won the Contest of Young Singers for Students of Musical Colleges (in 1993 and 1996). He has also studied at the Department of Vocal Music at the Latvian Academy of Music. In 1997, Mr. Antonenko joined the Latvian National Opera as a member of the choir, and just five months later made his debut as Oberto in Handel’s Alcina. Mr. Antonenko was the 2003 recipient of the Latvian Music Grand Prix for vocal performances in several opera productions and Verdi’s Requiem. During the 2004–2005 season, he was engaged by the world’s most influential opera companies, appearing in 74 opera performances. Mr. Antonenko has given performances in Israel, Poland, Estonia, Russia, and Hong Kong. He made his Latvian National Opera debut as Sergey in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Most recently Mr. Antonenko made his debut at The Metropolitan Opera Dvorák’s Rusalka with Renée Fleming.
Twenty-five-year-old bass-baritone Shenyang was the winner of the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and a 2008 winner of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He also won First Prize at the International Opera Competition in Verona, the 2007 Verona Orfeo Singing Competition, and the 2005 Verona Don Giovanni Singing Competition. Born in Tianjin, China, Shenyang studied with Professor Ping Gu at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He is currently enrolled jointly at The Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and at The Juilliard School Opera Center. Highlights of Shenyang’s 2009-10 season include a New York Philharmonic debut with Messiah performances under the baton of Helmuth Rilling, and a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Colline in La bohème. Past seasons’ highlights have included a Metropolitan Opera debut as Masetto in Don Giovanni under the baton of Louis Langrée; performances of Haydn's The Seasons with John Nelson at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing; solo lieder recitals at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and in New York at Lincoln Center under the auspices of The Juilliard School; and Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer with James Levine and Daniel Barenboim at Carnegie Hall.
Now in his sixth season at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine is the BSO’s 14th music director since the orchestra’s founding in 1881 and the first American-born conductor to hold that position. Maestro Levine made his Boston Symphony debut in April 1972 and became music director in the fall of 2004, having been named music director designate in October 2001. Highlights of his 2009-10 BSO programs include the premieres of commissioned works from Peter Lieberson, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, and John Williams; the BSO’s first complete Beethoven symphony cycle in 75 years, and the first BSO performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah since 1980, plus music of Berg, Berlioz, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Mozart, Ravel, Schubert, Strauss (Richard, Johann Sr., Johann Jr., and Josef), and Stravinsky. Mr. Levine’s programming each year balances orchestral, operatic, and choral classics with significant music of the 20th and 21st centuries, including newly commissioned works from such leading American composers as Babbitt, Carter, Harbison, Kirchner, Lieberson, Schuller, and Wuorinen. At Tanglewood each summer he leads performances with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, as well as TMC classes devoted to orchestral repertoire, Lieder, and opera. In February 2009, Mr. Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra released their first recordings together on the BSO Classics label, all taken from live performances—Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé, Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, and William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony and Lyric Concerto. James Levine is also Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, where, in the thirty-eight years since his debut there, he has led nearly 2,500 performances of 85 different operas, including fifteen company premieres. This season at the Met he conducts new productions of Tosca and Les Contes d’Hoffmann and revivals of Simon Boccanegra and Lulu, as well as concerts at Carnegie Hall with the MET Orchestra and MET Chamber Ensemble. Also a distinguished pianist, Mr. Levine is an active chamber music and recital collaborator, especially in Lieder and song repertoire with the world’s great singers.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s season in Boston takes place from September 23, 2009–May 1, 2010. Highlights of the 2009–2010 season include three world and three American premieres, a concentrated cycle of the complete symphonies of Beethoven, and a wide array of distinguished guests, including violinists Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, and Mira Wang, pianists Evgeny Kissin, Marc-André Hamelin, and Emanuel Ax, vocalists Renée Fleming, Gerald Finley, and Matthew Polenzani, and conductors Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Bernard Haitink. Now in its 129th season, the BSO gave its inaugural concert on October 22, 1881. Since then, the orchestra has performed throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, South America, and China, and also reaches audiences through its performances on radio and television, its highly successful web platform at bso.org, and its many recordings, including four new recordings released by the BSO and James Levine last February. The BSO plays an active role in commissioning new works from today’s most important composers and offers a wide variety of educational programs, including the Tanglewood Music Center, the orchestra's prestigious summer music academy at Tanglewood, the BSO's summer home in Lenox, MA. For further information, visit bso.org.
Program Information
Monday, April 5 at 8:00 p.m.
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Christine Brewer, Soprano
Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano
Aleksandrs Antonenko, Tenor
Shenyang, Bass-Baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, Conductor
FELIX MENDELSSOHN Elijah
Bank of America is the Proud Season Sponsor of Carnegie Hall.
Ticket Information |
Image from top of release: Stephanie Blythe and James Levine, Photo by Steve J. Sherman