Ravinia 2019, Issue 6, Week 12

MARIN ALSOP, conductor The first-ever “music curator” at Ravinia, Marin Alsop is overseeing the festival’s multi-year cel- ebration of Leonard Bernstein, this summer in- cluding three concerts with the Chicago Sympho- ny Orchestra and Ravinia’s first staging of Trouble in Tahiti . She began her professional education at The Juilliard School, where she earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and Yale Univer- sity, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2017; her career was launched in 1989 when she became the first woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize from the Tangle- wood, where she became Bernstein’s first female and final protégé. She is also the only conductor to have been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music and Royal Philharmonic Society, and was recently appointed the director of graduate con- ducting at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hop- kins University. In addition to her role at Ravinia, Alsop is central to Bernstein celebrations with the London Symphony Orchestra, with which she has a close and long-standing relationship, and the Southbank Centre, where she is an art- ist-in-residence. She has been music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2007 and is tenured until 2021, having had success not only with the ensemble but also with her Orch- Kids youth music initiative and the BSO Acade- my and Rusty Musicians adult program. She has also been principal conductor and music director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra since 2012, leading the ensemble on three extensive Europe- an tours to date, and will become chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra this fall. In addition to regular engagements with the CSO and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, Alsop frequently conducts such Eu- ropean ensembles as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, and London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. Her extensive discog- raphy has earned multiple Gramophone Awards and includes acclaimed Brahms, Dvořák, and Prokofiev cycles on Naxos and further recordings on Decca, Harmonia Mundi, and Sony Classical. Marin Alsop made her Ravinia and CSO debuts in 2002 and is in the midst of her sixth season appearance at the festival. PATRICIA RACETTE, soprano (Dinah) Introduced to the glow of footlights in her na- tive New Hampshire, Patricia Racette entered the University of North Texas to study vocal jazz and music education. During her senior year, however, she won first prize in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program auditions, and in 1988 she made her professional debut as a soprano. Racette spent the next several years perform- ing with the company in the Merola Program and later as an Adler Fellow. She has since ap- peared with many more top opera companies and houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Canadian Opera Company, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, La Scala, Paris Opera, Theater an der Wien, Gran Teatro del Liceu, and Baviarian State Opera. Racette’s portrayals of the title characters in Janáček’s Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová , Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tos- ca , and all three lead soprano roles in the same composer’s Il trittico have all earned her partic- ular acclaim, and in recent years her repertoire has expanded to include the title role of Strauss’s Salome (debuted at Ravinia in 2014), Minnie in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Katerina in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , Mag- da in Menotti’s The Consul , Anna Maurrant in Weill’s Street Scene , and Elle in Poulenc’s La voix humaine . Additionally, she has created the roles of Leslie Crosbie in Paul Moravec’s The Letter , Love Simpson in Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree , and a trio of Tobias Picker characters: Roberta Alden in An American Tragedy and the title roles of Emmeline and Dolores Claiborne . Last sum- mer Racette made her directorial debut with a new production of Verdi’s La traviata at the Op- era Theater of Saint Louis. Among her honors are Marian Anderson (1994), Richard Tucker (1998), and Opera News (2010) Awards, and in 2017 she shared in the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for her performance in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles with Los Angeles Opera. Patricia Racette made her Ra- vinia debut in 1993 and returns tonight for her seventh season and debut as Dinah in Trouble in Tahiti . PAULO SZOT, baritone (Sam) Born in São Paulo to Polish immigrants, baritone Paulo Szot has earned international acclaim as both an opera singer and actor, having appeared with numerous major opera companies in Eu- rope, the United States, and his native Brazil. In 2008, he starred as Emile De Beque in the Broad- way revival of South Pacific and became the first Brazilian to win Best Actor honors at each of the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theater World Awards. Over the past year, Szot has starred as Juan Perón in Evita with Opera Australia and Count Danilo in Lehár’s The Merry Widow at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and this fall he will appear as Sharpless in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Met. Last season he portrayed Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte with Paris National Opera, Count Almaviva inMozart’s The Marriage of Figaro withMichigan OperaTheatre, and Frank Mourrant in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene at Madrid’s Teatro Real, as well as the Celebrant in Bernstein’s Mass in concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia and the Nation- al Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Recent highlights have in- cluded creating the roles of Alexander Hamilton, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney in Mohammed Fairouz’s The New Prince with Dutch Nation- al Opera, appearing on the New York Philhar- monic’s televised New Year’s Eve gala with Alan Gilbert and Joyce DiDonato, and giving a solo recital at Madrid’s Teatro Real saluting Frank Sinatra’s recordings of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s bossa novas. Szot’s credits also include Lescaut in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (Theatro Municipal de São Paulo) and Massenet’s Manon (Metro- politan Opera); Dr. Falke in Strauss’s Die Fleder- maus , the Captain in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer , and Kovalev in Shostakovich’s The Nose (Metropolitan Opera); Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen (Glyndebourne Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and San Francisco Opera); the title roles of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Opera Austra- lia) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Washington National Opera and Dallas Opera); and Filippov in Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart (La Sca- la). Paulo Szot made his Ravinia and CSO debuts last season and returned to the festival in July for three programs with the CSO. RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 19 – AUGUST 25, 2019 100