Music Director Andreas Delfs will lead the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the MSO Chorus, Lee Erickson, director, in Ode to Joy November 30, December 1 and 2, 2007. The program features soloists Erika Sunnegärdh, Gigi Mitchell-Velasco, Stuart Neill, and Andrea Silvestrelli in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Leonard Berstein’s Chichester Psalms will also be performed.
The MSO’s 2007/08 season boasts performances of all nine Beethoven symphonies, paired with significant works by major American composers.
Leonard Berstein’s Chichester Psalms for Chorus and Orchestra was commissioned by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral. Bernstein completed this work in May of 1965, and it was premiered in July of that same year by the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein conducted the performance. He had taken a year sabbatical during 1964 to contemplate contemporary techniques of composition, since he had been away from composition for nearly a decade. These psalms are sung in Hebrew.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was written between 1822 and 1824. Beethoven conducted the first performance in Vienna the year of its completion. Eleven years passed between the composition of the Eighth and Ninth symphonies; Beethoven was planning both a Ninth and Tenth symphony in 1818, yet decided to put away the Tenth symphony and focus solely on the completion of the ninth. At its premiere, Beethoven was already quite deaf, and could not hear the enthusiastic applause of the audience until the soprano turned him around onstage.
Erika Sunnegärdh made her Milwaukee debut in 2005 with the Florentine Opera, singing the part of Leonore in the production Fidelio. She has since performed with the Metropolitan Opera, the Swedish Radio Symphony, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, among others. During her education, she attended the Israel Vocal Arts Institute, Tanglewood Music Center, the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies, The International Institute of Vocal Arts, as well as the undergraduate program at the Manhattan School of Music; all on scholarship.
Gigi Mitchell-Velasco has been praised by the critics and public alike for her interpretations of Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss. The New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini wrote that she sings with a “dark-hued sound and elegance,” and the Wall Street Journal called her “the most finished artist, sensitive to every nuance of the text.” A protégé of Christa Ludwig, Mitchell-Velasco is a two-time winner of the Robert Lauch Memorial Grant of the New York Wagner Society and the recipient of the 1997 American Wagner Association Award at the Liederkranz Foundation Competition for Wagnerian Voice. Other awards include the 1996 First Prize and an Artist’s Grant in 2001 at the Annamaria Saritelli-di Panni Bel Canto Awards.
American tenor Stuart Neill is establishing himself as one of the most important tenors in the world today through successful engagements in the finest opera houses and concert halls of the world with leading conductors and orchestras. Mr. Neill has performed with The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro alla Scala, Teatro La Fenice, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Dallas Opera, The Atlanta Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic Boston Symphony, and Dresden's Staatskapelle.
This season, Andrea Silvestrelli is traveling across the country and around the world lending his strong bass voice to Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Houston Grand Opera, La bohéme in Chicago, the Washington National Opera as Sparafucile, to the San Francisco Opera as Fasolt, and the Milwaukee Symphony for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Silvestrelli opened last season as Ferrando in Il trovatore at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, followed by Timur in the same house, and went on to sing Hermann in Tannhäuser with Seiji Ozawa at the Nomori Opera Festival in Tokyo, and made his debut in the title role of Bluebeard’s Castle for the Welsh National Opera. -- www.milwaukeesymphony.org
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