Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 1 - The Flying Dutchman

29 | Lyric Opera of Chicago MIKA KARES DALAND Previously at Lyric: Commendatore/ Don Giovanni (2019/20). The Finnish bass studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and was a member of the Baden State Opera ensemble from 2005 to 2010. This summer he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Hagen in Götterdämmerung . Other opera roles include Hunding/ Die Walküre , Fafner and Fasolt/ Das Rheingold and Siegfried , Hermann/ Tannhäuser , King Marke/ Tristan und Isolde , Heinrich der Vogler/ Lohengrin , Jacopo Fiesco/ Simon Boccanegra , Zaccaria/ Nabucco , King René/ Iolanta , Ivan/ Khovanshchina, and the title role in Bluebeard’s Castle , for which he earned a Grammy nomination for a 2021 recording on BIS. Additional recordings include Boris Godunov with the Gothenburg Symphony and Kent Nagano (BIS, 2019). Upcoming roles include Timur/ Turandot and Jacopo Fiesco/ Simon Boccanegra at Paris’s Opéra Bastille as well as new productions of Dvorˇák’s Rusalka (Vodník) and Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina (Ivan) at Berlin’s State Opera. Kares is a sought- after concert singer, his broad repertoire including Mozart’s Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, and Symphonies No. 13 and 14 by Shostakovich. RYAN CAPOZZO STEERSMAN Previously at Lyric: Remendado/ Carmen (2022/23). The tenor, a second-year member of the Ryan Opera Center, received a Master of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded the Phyllis Curtin Career Entry Prize and was heard with Yale Opera as Arcadio/ Florencia en el Amazonas and Tamino/ The Magic Flute (partial role, Spring Opera Showcase). Previously, Capozzo earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Purchase College Conservatory of Music. At Purchase Opera, he was featured as Rinuccio/ Gianni Schicchi (guest artist), Reverend Samuel Parris/Robert Ward’s The Crucible , Don Ottavio/ Don Giovanni , Nero/ L’incoronazione di Poppea , and Lysander/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Capozzo’s portrayal of Mozart’s Tamino has been heard at the Berlin Opera Academy. The Huntington, New York native is a two-time Second Place Regional winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and was invited to participate in the 2023 Georg Solti Accademia. Ryan Capozzo is sponsored by the H. Earl and Miriam U. Hoover Endowment Fund. MELODY WILSON MARY Lyric debut This season, Wilson makes her debut at Carnegie Hall with Mozart’s Requiem and with Atlanta Opera as Hermia/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream . She also performs Rossweisse/ Die Walküre with the Dallas Symphony and the oratorio Sanctuary Road at the Bach Festival in Orlando. Last season, the mezzo-soprano joined the ensemble of the Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Cousin Blanche in Terence Blanchard’s Champion, and returned to Seattle Opera for Fricka/ Das Rheingold . She also performed a staged version of Sanctuary Road at the Penn Square Music Festival and Fenena/ Nabucco with Washington Concert Opera. Other concert appearances included the world premiere of Bodies On the Line by Martin Rokeach with the Oakland Symphony and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra. In 2022, she appeared with San Francisco Symphony in Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, with the Dallas Symphony as Olga/ Eugene Onegin, with the Oakland Symphony in a recital, with the Baltimore Concert Opera as Principessa di Bouillon/ Adriana Lecouvreur, with the Princeton Festival as Mrs. Herring/ Albert Herring, and with Union Avenue Opera as Meg Page/ Falstaff. In 2020 and 2021, she made company debuts with Seattle Opera, Indianapolis Opera, and Cincinnati Opera, and returned to Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s NewWorks, Bold Voices program. ENRIQUE MAZZOLA CONDUCTOR Lyric’s Music Director—only the third in the company’s history—is renowned as an expert interpreter and champion of bel canto opera and Verdi repertoire, and as a specialist in French repertoire. Lyric audiences first experienced the Italian conductor’s artistry in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in 2016/17, and subsequently in Bellini’s I puritani in 2017/18. During 2019/20, he led Verdi’s Luisa Miller to launch the company’s Early Verdi Series. Mazzola’s first opera as Lyric’s music director, Sir David McVicar’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth , opened the 2021/22 season, followed by Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love as well as Verdi Voices and Rising Stars in Concert . Mazzola is Principal Guest Conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and, since 2022, the first ever Conductor-in-Residence at the Bregenz Festival. He served as Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre National d’Île de France from 2012 to 2019. Symphonic guest work has included the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre National de France, and Oslo Philharmonic. He has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the major houses of Florence, Berlin, Zurich, Moscow, and Tokyo, in addition to a historic Meyerbeer cycle for Deutsche Oper Berlin. Past major European festivals have included Glyndebourne (including DVD releases of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Poliuto, and Don Pasquale ), new productions