Ravinia 2022, Issue 4

DARIO ACOSTA (BRUGGER); JOHN MATTHEW MYERS (DIXON) JANAI BRUGGER, soprano A native of Chicago, Janai Brugger completed a master’s degree at the University of Mich- igan, where she studied with the late Shirley Verrett, and a bachelor’s degree at DePaul University, subsequently joining the Mero- la Opera Program at San Francisco Opera and becoming a Domingo-Thornton Young Artist at Los Angeles Opera for two seasons. In 2012, she not only won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions but also took all three top prizes in the Operalia com- petition: Opera Prize, Song Prize, and Audi- ence Prize. Since debuting at the Met as Liù in Puccini’s Turandot , Brugger has appeared with the company as Jemmy in Rossini’s Guil- laume Tell , Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen , Hele- na in the pastiche The Enchanted Island , and Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute , as well as Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for several recent productions. She previously essayed the role at Dutch National Opera, where she has also sung Servilia in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Haydn’s Missa in tempore Belli . In recent seasons, Brugger has reprised Pamina for her Royal Opera at Covent Garden debut and Palm Beach Opera’s first Outdoor Opera Festival; Servilia at Los Angeles Opera; Liù at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she also appeared at Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo ; and Micaëla at Cincinnati Opera, where she also sang Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro . Next season she will reprise Susanna in Los Angeles and also return to the Met for her first Glauce in Cherubini’s Médée . Future en- gagements also include Haydn’s Creation at the Grant Park Music Festival and her Vienna debut at the Musikverein singing Brahms’s Requiem with the City of Birmingham Sym- phony Orchestra, which she will rejoin to perform Mahler’s Second Symphony in the UK. In July, she sang Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Tanglewood. Janai Brugger was a fellow at Ravinia Steans Music Institute in 2011 and returned twice in 2012, for the US premiere of Weill’s Zaubernacht and in The Magic Flute , as well as earlier this season for Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony. ASHLEY DIXON, mezzo-soprano A 2018 winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon is also a 2019 alum of the Adler Fellowship at San Francisco Opera. During her two-year residency, she made her SFO main-stage debut in Heggie’s It’s a Wonder- ful Life as a First-Class Angel and was also heard as Mércèdes in Bizet’s Carmen , Third Wood Sprite in Dvořák’s Rusalka , the Italian Singer in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut , and the Sandman in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gre- tel . Dixon was also a two-year participant in SFO’s Merola Opera Program, during which she portrayed La Ciesca in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi , Mrs. Nolan in Menotti’s The Me- dium , and Popova in Walton’s The Bear . In Adler and Merola end-of-season concerts, she sang a duet and an aria from Massenet’s Cendrillon as well as “Dopo notte,” the glit- tering final aria from Handel’s Ariodante . In the spring of 2020, Dixon made her Los An- geles Opera debut as Sara in Donizetti’s Ro- berto Devereux , and she has since appeared in the title roles of Bolcom’s Lucrezia for Opera Louisiane and Bizet’s Carmen with Atlanta Opera and Hawaii Opera Theater, as Doris in Puts’s Elizabeth Cree with West Edge Opera, and as Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma with Fes- tival Opera. Recent highlights include Mrs. Splinters in Copland’s The Tender Land with Detroit Opera and Flora in Verdi’s La travia- ta with Des Moines Metro Opera, where she made her professional debut, and her reper- toire also includes the title roles of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas , Rossini’s La Cenerentola , and Handel’s Ariodante , as well as Marguerite in Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust and Ros- ina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville . Dixon holds a BM from Louisiana State University and an MM from the University of Michigan, where she portrayed the title role of Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Sister Helen Prejean in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking . Ashley Dixon was a Ravinia Steans Music Institute fellow in 2019, that year also performing at Ravinia on a winter tour with RSMI alumni singers and program director Kevin Murphy and during the summer in Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared with mezzo Jennifer John- son Cano and tenor Matthew Polenzani. She is making her Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut in these return performances. LOUIS LOHRASEB, harpsichord, assistant conductor, coach Rising conductor Louis Lohraseb made his professional debut in 2019 leading perfor- mances of Bizet’s Carmen at Teatro dell’Op- era di Roma, and this past year he added debuts with the Komische Oper Berlin con- ducting Verdi’s La traviata and Semperoper Dresden in a return to Carmen . Currently a doctoral candidate at the Indiana Universi- ty Jacobs School of Music, guided by Arthur Fagen, David Effron, and Kevin Murphy, he has served as an assistant conductor and op- era coach for several IU Opera Theater pro- ductions, most recently Puccini’s La rondine . Lohraseb is also an assistant conductor to James Conlon at Los Angeles Opera, where he joined the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program after being an assistant at the Glimmerglass Festival for Rossini’s The Bar- ber of Seville and Bernstein’s West Side Story in 2018. Recent highlights include Off Grand performances conducting the LA Opera Or- chestra in Hitchcock’s Psycho at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, as well as serving as assistant conductor for Teatro dell’Opera di Roma’s production of Britten’s Billy Budd and LA Op- era’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco . Lohraseb previously assisted Conlon in productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro at Ravinia in 2014, and then in 2016 he was selected to be the conducting fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he led and assisted in both operatic and symphon- ic literature. After graduating summa cum laude from the State University of New York– Geneseo in 2013, he was appointed the con- ducting fellow at Yale University, where he studied with Shinik Hahm and served as the Yale Philharmonia’s assistant conductor un- der such musicians as Peter Oundjian, John Adams, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Before completing his master’s degree in conducting at Yale in 2015, Lohraseb founded the Ama- deus Orchestra, served as music director of the Cheshire Symphony Orchestra, and was a conducting fellow at the Castleton Festival in Virginia in 2014. Louis Lohraseb is giving his debut performances at Ravinia and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. HARRY SILVERSTEIN, stage director The director of DePaul Opera Theatre since 1990, Harry Silverstein has developed a rep- utation as one of the most successful inter- preters of Mozart’s operas. His original pro- duction of The Magic Flute for San Francisco Opera, Opera Carolina, and Opera Omaha premiered in 2012 and was later reprised by Washington National Opera, which broad- cast it to an audience of 20,000 at Nationals Park. imilarly, his 2012 staging of Verdi’s Rigo- letto for San Francisco Opera was shown to 30,000 at AT&T Park. After apprenticing on the staff of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Silver- stein made his company debut staging Verdi’s La traviata and returned in 2010 to direct Bi- zet’s Carmen . Also a former apprentice and staff member of Houston Grand Opera, he has directed both Rigoletto and La traviata for the company, as well as Mozart’s Don Giovan- ni , The Marriage of Figaro , and Così fan tutte . Further Mozart credits include Don Giovanni for Dallas, Wolf Trap, and Chautauqua Op- eras; The Marriage of Figaro for Opera Pacific and Washington National Opera; Così fan tutte for Dallas and Utah Operas; and Idome- neo for Opera Northern Ireland. Silverstein has staged such other standard repertoire as Puccini’s La bohème (San Francisco Opera) and Madama Butterfly (Victorian State and Auckland operas), Donizetti’s Lucia di Lam- mermoor (Dallas Opera) and Don Pasquale (Opera Mobile), Verdi’s Il trovatore (Tulsa Opera), Puccini’s Tosca and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (Opera Pacific), Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (Utah Opera), and Saint- Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (Opera Omaha). In contemporary opera, Silverstein has worked closely with Philip Glass on productions of the composer’s Satyagraha , Akhnaten , The Fall of the House of Usher (South American premiere), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (European premiere), and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (American premiere). He has also di- rected the premieres of Stephen Barlow’s King and Conrad Cummings’s Tonkin , among other works. Harry Silverstein has directed Ravinia’s presentations of Mozart’s Abduc- tion from the Seraglio (2008), Così fan tutte (2010), and The Marriage of Figaro (2014) in the Martin Theatre as well as Pavilion concert performances of Così fan tutte (1996) and The Marriage of Figaro (2004). RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 1 – AUGUST 14, 2022 44 I ; I