Ravinia 2019, Issue 6, Week 12

MICHELLE AREYZAGA, soprano Since completing a BA in vocal performance at Roosevelt University, Michelle Areyzaga has cultivated a soprano voice equally at home on concert and theater stages, with career highlights including appearances with Chicago Opera Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s In the Neigh- borhood series, Opera Birmingham, Ravinia Festival, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, as well as with New York City Opera in Telemann’s Orpheus and on its VOX series. Areyzaga has become closely associated with the music of Leonard Bernstein, from portray- ing Cunégonde in Candide to varied programs of the composer’s theater and concert music. For six years she toured alongside Jamie Bernstein, the composer’s eldest daughter, presenting the program “Bernstein on Broadway” with such en- sembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic, as well as at the Oregon Bach Festival, among many others. She continues to perform his music regularly in Las Vegas and at Ravinia. As an orchestral solo- ist, Areyzaga has also been heard at the Grant Park Music Festival and with the Rhode Island Philharmonic and Richmond, Toledo, Colora- do, Rochester, Phoenix, Hartford, San Antonio, Wichita, Cheyenne, and North Carolina Sym- phony Orchestras. Additional highlights include singing the first performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass in Costa Rica; her European debut as solo- ist in Vaughan Williams’s G-minor Mass at En- gland’s York Minster Cathedral, Ely Cathedral, and St. Mary’s Church in Oxford; and a Paris bow as soloist in Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass with the orchestra of London’s Royal Academy of Music and the St. Charles Singers. Areyzaga has also bowed in the title role of Puccini’s Mad- ama Butterfly and as Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore , Lauretta in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi , Casilda in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers , both Musetta and Mimì in Puccini’s La bohème , and the Mozartean roles of Susanna in The Mar- riage of Figaro , Despina in Così fan tutte , Zerlina in Don Giovanni , and Pamina in The Magic Flute . Michelle Areyzaga was a fellow at Ravinia’s Ste- ans Music Institute in 2001, and tonight marks her eighth season on the festival’s main stage. VOCAL ALUMNI OF RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE (RSMI), Jazz Trio 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 re- cently recorded an album of Schumann’s Dich- terliebe and both Liederkreis , due to be released this year. He is currently a professor of voice at the Academia Galamian in Málaga, Spain. Nils Nilsen was a fellow at Ravinia’s Steans Music In- stitute last season and is returning to the conser- vatory this summer. He was also heard at Ravin- ia earlier this summer on the program “Leonard Bernstein: Man for All Music.” NATHANIEL OLSON, baritone After two seasons at the Brevard Music Center, Illinois-native baritone Nathaniel Olson grad- uated from Wheaton College with a bachelor’s degree in 2011 and also attended the Franz Schubert Institute that year. Then, following two seasons at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2013, and in 2015 he performed in its Weill Recital Hall with mentor, coach, and collaborator Kevin Murphy. Olson also completed a master’s degree at In- diana University that year, and he is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro. In addition to originat- ing the role of Tomasz in Wlad Marhulets’s The Property with Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Lyric Unlimited series in 2015, Olson has appeared with the company as Jacob in Dean Burry’s The Brothers Grimm for its Opera in the Neighbor- hoods series. His credits also include the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Oklahoma International Mozart Festival, Marco in Pucci- ni’s Gianni Schicchi and Eisenstein in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus at the Brevard Music Center, the Ghost of Virgil in Rachmaninoff ’s Frances- ca da Rimini and Betto in Gianni Schicchi at the Princeton Festival, and Count Almaviva in Mo- zart’s Le nozze di Figaro , Faninal in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier , Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff , and Eddie Carbone in William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge with Indiana University Opera Theater. Olson has also performed with Indianapolis Opera and on the stages of the Tucson Desert Song Festival and London’s Wigmore Hall. To- gether with his wife, soprano Julianne Olson, he has toured South Korea extensively with the Far East Broadcasting Company as well as through- out Indonesia, where he was a lecturer of music and coordinator of classical voice and choir for the Universitas Pelita Harapan Conservatory of Music in Jakarta during 2015–16. Nathaniel Ol- son was a fellow at Ravinia’s Steans Music Insti- tute in 2012 and 2013, performing as a soloist in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the latter year, and he returned in 2017 for a winter con- cert tour with RSMI alumni. AUGUST 19 – AUGUST 25, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 101