Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 1 - Rigoletto

31 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Columbus, Tulsa Opera, and Knoxville Opera, among others. Her numerous honors include an Encouragement Award from the 2024 London Foundation Competition, third place in the 2023 and 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, Midwest Region, second place and the soprano prize in the 2023 George Shirley Vocal Competition, and first place in the 2023 Dallas Opera Guild Lonestar Vocal Competition. Adia Evans is sponsored by Lead Sponsor the H.Earl and Miriam U.Hoover Foundation and cosponsors Peggy and Ron Beata. MAIRE THERESE CARMACK GIOVANNA Lyric debut This season, the American mezzo-soprano will make her house debut at Houston Grand Opera as Dodo in Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves and return to the Metropolitan Opera for The Magic Flute—Holiday Presentation (Second Lady). She also makes her San Francisco Opera debut in Die Zauberflöte (Dritte Dame) and returns to Deutsche Oper Berlin to reprise Der Missmut in Rued Langgaard’s Antikrist , which will be released on DVD in a collaboration with NAXOS. In concert, Carmack makes debuts with the Oregon Bach Festival as alto soloist in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and with UF Symphony Orchestra as alto soloist in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony . Carmack joined the Metropolitan Opera for the 2023/24 Season as a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. The 2022/23 Season marked her European debut with Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she opened the season in the title role of Carmen . During her year-long tenure with the company, she was seen in Don Quichotte (Dulcinée), Rigoletto (Giovanna/Maddalena), Die Zauberflöte (Dritte Dame), Lucia di Lammermoor (Alisa), Manon Lescaut (Singer), Salome (Page), and Antikrist (Der Missmut). GEMMA NHA PAGE Lyric debut The Korean-Australian soprano and first-year Ryan Opera Center member was a national semi-finalist for the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and a winner in the 2024 Gerda Lissner Foundation Vocal Competition. In the 2022/23 Season, Nha made her house and role debut at Volksoper Wien as Barbarina/ Le nozze di Figaro , a role she will perform this season at Lyric. She will also appear at Lyric this season as Jess/ The Listeners . Nha recently received her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where she was a Toulmin Scholar and recipient of the Kovner Fellowship. Roles there included Ruth Baldwin/John Musto and Mark Campbell’s Later the Same Evening and Flerida/Cavalli’s Erismena . Other operatic credits include Zerlina/ Don Giovanni and Esmeralda/ Die verkaufte Braut with the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where she completed undergraduate studies. In concert, Nha has sung Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Messiah , and she performed with Patti Lupone on her 2018 Don’t Monkey with Broadway tour at the Sydney Opera House. Gemma Nha is sponsored by Lead Sponsor Peter Scheuermann and cosponsors Drs.George and Sally Dunea. 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 in 2019 for Bregenz ( Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly ) and Salzburg ( Orphée aux Enfers ), Pesaro (Rossini Opera Festival), Venice, and Aix-en-Provence. Mazzola was born in Barcelona, Spain, into a musical family, and grew up in Milan, where he studied violin and piano, earning diplomas in composition and orchestral conducting at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. Enrique Mazzola is supported by the John D.and Alexandra C.Nichols Endowed Chair. MARY BIRNBAUM DIRECTOR Lyric debut Birnbaum has directed opera and music theater around the world, including staging critically acclaimed productions of Rossi’s L’Orfeo , Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up , and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at The Juilliard School and The Classical Style at Ojai and Carnegie Hall. In 2019, her production of Puccini’s La Bohème opened the Santa Fe Opera season, and her production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas toured to Opera Holland Park and Opéra de Versailles. Birnbaum has also directed productions at Opera Philadelphia, The New York Philharmonic, Seattle Opera, Bard Music Festival, Virginia Opera, Virginia Arts Festival, Ojai Festival, Montclair Peak Performances, and Boston Baroque in the US, as well as in Taiwan (with the National Symphony Orchestra), Central America (National Theatre of Costa Rica and Guatemala), Australia, and Israel. World premieres include In a Grove by Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann and The Classical Style by Steven Stucky and Jeremy Denk. On the faculty of The Juilliard School since 2011, Birnbaum also coaches acting in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera. She was named general and artistic director of Opera Saratoga in 2023. r