The Dallas Opera 2021-2022 - Madame Butterfly/Flight

20 ABOUT THE ARTISTS John Holiday (Refugee) Since winning The Dallas Opera’s 2011 National Vocal Competition, the countertenor’s successes in opera have ranged from Handel’s Xerxes (Glimmerglass Festival) and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (LA Opera) to Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei (Portland Opera, Holiday’s operatic stage debut), Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice (LA Opera, world premiere), Jonathan Dove’s Flight (Des Moines and Utah operas), Daniel Roumain’s We Shall Not Be Moved (world premiere at Opera Philadelphia, reprised for the singer’s European debut with the Dutch National Opera), and Huang Ruo’s Paradise Interrupted (Shanghai’s Macau Arts Festival). In the latter, Holiday sang the First Male Voice, a role he created in the 2016 Spoleto Festival world premiere. Recent seasons have brought appearances at La Jolla Music Festival and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a recital curated as part of the Jacob Lawrence “Struggle Series.” Other performances taken place at such venues as the Kennedy Center, the legendary Apollo Theater, The Sorting Room in Beverly Hills, and Trinity Wall Street, as well as Houston’s Ars Lyrica, the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, London’s Barbican Centre, and Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts. Holiday has toured with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic singing Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and has performed with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and the Nashville Symphony. Jessica Pratt (Controller) The Dallas Opera debut Since making her European debut in 2007 as Donizetti’s Lucia, the English-born Australian soprano has been acclaimed for bel canto heroines, most recently singing the title role in Linda di Chamounix in Florence. Pratt has starred at La Scala, the Arena di Verona, the Teatro La Fenice, the Teatro San Carlo, Pesaro’s Rossini Opera Festival, and Rome’s Accademia di Santa Cecilia. She has also earned critical praise at the Metropolitan Opera and the leading houses of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Zurich, London, Hamburg, and Paris. Among the major conductors with whom she has collaborated are Rizzi, Noseda, Nagano, Dudamel, and Minkowski, among many others. Pratt has recorded numerous rarely heard works, including Rossini’s Otello and Vaccai’s La sposa di Messina, both on CD; and, on DVD, Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco (Festival Valle d’Itria); Rossini’s Adelaide di Borgogna , Ciro in Babilonia , and Aureliano in Palmira (all at the Rossini Opera Festival); and Donizetti’s Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (La Scala). In 2016 her first solo album, Serenade , was released by Opus Arte. Karita Mattila (Older Woman) The Dallas Opera debut The world-renowned Finnish soprano has triumphed repeatedly in all the world’s major opera houses. Among the most recent additions to her constantly expanding repertoire have been Kundry in Parsifal (Turku Music Festival), the Foreign Princess in Rusalka (Madrid’s Teatro Real, Opéra National de Paris), Kostelni č ka in Jen ů fa (Brno’s National Theatre, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera), Ortrud in Lohengrin (Bavarian State Opera), Kabanicha in Katya Kabanova (Berlin State Opera), Widow Begbick in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aix-en-Provence Festival), and Mme. De Croissy in Dialogues des Carmélites (Met). Other successes in her greatly celebrated career in the major opera houses around the world include Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair , Sieglinde in Die Walküre , Marie in Wozzeck , and the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos . An influential artistic force in the development of new music, Mattila has premiered Kaija Saariaho’s Quatre instants , Mirage , and the monodrama Emilie , which received its first performance at Opéra National de Lyon in 2010. The soprano, who has recorded a wide-ranging discography, holds two Grammy® Awards for Best Opera Recording. THE DALLAS OPERA | 2021/2022 SEASON