Ravinia 2019, Issue 4, Week 8

ISABEL LEONARD, mezzo-soprano Most recently honored with the Richard Tucker Award in 2013, American mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has also received the Beverly Sills Artist Award (2011), a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foun- dation Award (2006), the William Schuman (2006) and Makiko Narumi (2005) Prizes from The Juilliard School, and the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award of the Music Academy of the West (2005). Earlier this year she embarked on a national tour of the United States with the Czech Philharmonic, presenting an all-Bern- stein program, and she appeared in concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and with the San Francisco Symphony. Leonard made three appearances on the Met stage this season, singing the title role in the US premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie and reprising her portrayals of Blanche de la Force in Pou- lenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelleas et Mélisande . She has been a regular with the company since her 2007 debut, taking bows as Stéphano in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette , Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville , Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther , Miranda in the Met premiere ofThomas Adès’s The Tempest , and the Mozartean roles of Zerlina in Don Giovanni , Dorabella in Così fan tutte , and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro . Leonard’s operatic high- lights also include Ada in the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain (Santa Fe Opera), Angelina in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Vienna and Bavarian State Operas, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera), Adal- gisa in Bellini’s Norma and Sesto in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (Canadian Opera Company), Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare (Paris National Opera), Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (Aix- en-Provence Festival), and Ruggiero in Han- del’s Alcina and the title role of Offenbach’s La Périchole (Bordeaux National Opera), as well as engagements with Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Salzburg and Glyndebourne Festivals. In concert, she has been a soloist with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Cleveland Orchestra, and Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, among other ensembles. Isabel Leonard is making her Ravinia debut. NILS NILSEN, tenor Lyric tenor Nils Georg Nilsen hails from Oslo, Norway, and made his Lincoln Center debut in 2012, having earned a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and also trained at the Norwegian Academy of Music. At age 13 he sang a duet with Kiri Te Kanawa at Oslo’s Spectrum on a concert broadcast and recorded by the Norwegian Broadcasting System, and he has won the Solveig’s Award of the Edvard Grieg Competition, the Audience Award of the LidalNorth festival (on several occasions), and Norway’s Youth Music Competition. Last season, Nilsen took the stages of Norwegian Opera, Israeli Opera in Tel-Aviv, the Málaga Clásica festival in Spain, and Reza e i Ragazzi in Switzerland, and this year his schedule includes Mozart’s Requiem with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Handel’s Messiah with the Drammen Symphony Orches- tra, and several recitals. On the opera stage, he has portrayed Elvino in Bellini’s La sonnambula , Aumônier in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites , Rinucco in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi , Tinca in Puccini’s Il tabarro , Tom Rakewell in Stravin- sky’s The Rake’s Progress , and Torquemada in Ravel’s L’heure espagnole , and as an oratorio so- loist, he has also been featured in Orff ’s Carmina Burana , Puccini’s Mass, Mendelssohn’s Christus , and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Additionally, he has been a vocal soloist in performances of Gil- bert & Sullivan, The Ballet! by Dances Patrelle in New York. For the Centaur label, Nilsen recent- ly recorded an album of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and both Liederkreis , due to be released this year. He is currently a professor of voice at the Aca- demia Galamian in Málaga, Spain. Nils Nilsen was a fellow at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute last season and is returning to the conservatory this summer. Tonight he is making his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, and he will also be heard at Ravinia on August 22 in the vocal trio of Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti . ROBERT CHEN, violin Appointed to the position by Daniel Barenbo- im, Robert Chen has been concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1999. He began studying violin at age 7 in his native Tai- wan, continuing to hone his skills with Robert Lipsett when his family relocated to Los Angeles in 1979, there also participating in master class- es led by Jascha Heifetz. Chen went on to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree fromThe Juilliard School under the guidance of Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. As part of winning first prize in the 1994 Hanover International Vi- olin Competition, Chen recorded Tchaikovsky’s complete violin works for the Berlin Classics la- bel. During his tenure as the CSO’s concertmas- ter, Chen has been featured as a soloist under the batons of Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Christoph Es- chenbach, Charles Dutoit, Ton Koopman, Osmo Vänskä, Vasily Petrenko, Nicholas Kraemer, and James Conlon, giving the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Astral Canticle as well as the CSO premieres of concertos by György Ligeti, Elliot Carter, and Witold Lutosławski. Beyond these performances, Chen maintains a solo career that has included performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra of Hanover, Asia Philharmonic, and the Bournemouth Sympho- ny. His collaborators in chamber music have included Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Lang Lang, Christoph Eschenbach, Myung-Whun Chung, Emanuel Ax, Mitsuko Uchida, Lynn Harrell, and János Starker, and Chen has toured exten- sively with Musicians fromMarlboro and the Jo- hannes Quartet, of which he is a founding mem- ber. He also frequently participates in the Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Music Festival, La Jolla Chamber Music Festival, and the Schloss Mori- tzburg Festival. In addition to his regular perfor- mances at Ravinia during the CSO’s residency, Robert Chen has been a soloist with the orches- tra at the festival in 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2011, and he was featured on the BGH Classics series this past winter. JULY 22 – JULY 28, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 113