Thursday, April 19, 2018

Sergio Mims: Michael Tilson Thomas Makes MET Orchestra Debut with Soprano Pretty Yende Singing Mozart and Mahler on June 5

Pretty Yende
(Sony Classics)

Sergio A. Mims writes:

The MET Orchestra returns to Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage for a series of three concerts, led by three dynamic conductors this May and June. For the orchestra’s final concert of the series, Tuesday June 5 at 8 PM conductor Michael Tilson Thomas makes his MET Orchestra debut with soprano Pretty Yende singing Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G Major. The program opens with Carl Ruggles’s Evocations.

With her magnetic charm, critically- and popularly-acclaimed operatic and solo performances worldwide and a successful debut album, South African soprano Pretty Yende has quickly become one of the brightest stars of the classical music world. Since making her professional operatic debut at the Latvian National Theatre in Riga as Micaela in Carmen, she has sung at nearly all of the major theaters of the world, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Opéra National de Paris, Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Opernhaus Zürich, and Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

In January of 2013, Yende made her critically and popularly acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut, stepping in as the Countess Adele in Le Comte Ory on short notice, opposite Juan Diego Florez. Immediately afterwards, she made her Vienna debut at the Theater an der Wien in the same opera.

A 2011 graduate of the Young Artists Accademia of the Teatro alla Scala, she made her debut with the company in 2010 as Berenice in Rossini’s L’Occasione fa il Ladro. In 2010, she became the first artist in the history of the Belvedere competition to win first prize in every category and went on to win First Prize in Placido Domingo’s Operalia Competition in 2011. Yende sings the title role in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met from April 25 and next season will be seen in Bizet’s Les Pecheurs de Perles and Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment.

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