115 / 124
PAUL APPLEBY,
tenor
A Chicago-area native, tenor Paul Appleby was a
2009 winner of the Metropolitan Opera Nation-
al Council Auditions, having completed both
an Artist Diploma and master’s degree from
The Juilliard School and dual bachelor’s degrees
from the University of Notre Dame. He was
subsequently awarded both a Richard Tucker
Career Grant and George London Foundation
Award in 2011, as well as the Lincoln Center’s
Martin E. Segal Award, the top prize of the Ger-
da Lissner Foundation, and a Leonore Annen-
berg Fellowship in 2012. After completing the
Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development
Program, Appleby made his debut with the com-
pany as Brighella in Strauss’s
Ariadne auf Naxos
in 2011, returning later that year to create the
role of Demetrius in its premiere of the Shake-
spearean pastiche
The Enchanted Island
. His Met
credits also include Hylas in Berlioz’s
Les Troy-
ens
, Chevalier de la Force in Poulenc’s
Dialogues
of the Carmelites
, the lead role of Brian in the
US premiere of Nico Muhly’s
Two Boys
, David in
Wagner’s
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
, Tom
Rakewell in Stravinsky’s
The Rake’s Progress
, and
most recently the Mozartean roles Belmonte in
The Abduction from the Seraglio
and Don Otta-
vio in
Don Giovanni
, having previously bowed
with Canadian Opera Company as Ferrando in
Così fan tutte
and Washington National Opera
as Tamino in
The Magic Flute
. Following his
2015 Glyndebourne debut as Jonathan in Han-
del’s
Saul
, Appleby achieved a career highlight
in his return to the company in the title role of
Berlioz’s
Béatrice et Bénédict
. This past winter,
he starred as Joe Cannon in the world premiere
of John Adams’s
Girls of the Golden West
with
San Francisco Opera. In concert, Appleby re-
cently made debuts with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra for Schubert’s E-flat-major Mass and
the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Mozart’s can-
tata
Laut verkünde unsre Freude
and
The Magic
Flute
(reprising Tamino), and he returned to the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for Berlioz’s
Te
Deum
. Paul Appleby attended Ravinia’s Steans
Music Institute in 2008 and is making his first
return to the festival.
TAMARA WILSON,
soprano
A graduate of the University of Cincinnati Col-
lege-Conservatory of Music, soprano Tamara
Wilson was awarded both a study grant (2008)
and career grant (2011) by the Richard Tucker
Music Foundation before receiving the Richard
Tucker Award in 2016. She is also an alumna of
the Houston Grand Opera Studio, a finalist in
the 2004 Metropolitan Opera National Coun-
cil Auditions, and the grand-prize winner of
the 2011 Francisco Viñas Competition. Wilson
recently made her role debut as Chrysothemis
in R. Strauss’s
Elektra
at Houston Grand Opera
and will reprise the performance next summer
in Zurich. She began her 2017/18 season with
Washington National Opera in the title role of
Verdi’s
Aida
, the vehicle of her 2015 Metropoli-
tan Opera debut, and returns to the Met in the
role this fall. A noted Verdi interpreter, Wilson
portrayed Alice Ford in
Falstaff
in her WNO de-
but and Leonora in
La forza del destino
for her
2015 London debut with English National Opera
in a new production by Calixto Bieito. Her Ver-
di credits also include both the French Elisabeth
de Valois in
Don Carlos
with HGO and the Ital-
ian Elisabetta in
Don Carlo
with Bavarian State
Opera, Zurich Opera, and Frankfurt Opera;
Amelia in
Un ballo in maschera
with Deutsche
Oper Berlin (debut), HGO, WNO, and Florida
Grand Opera; Leonora in
Il trovatore
with HGO
and at Gran Teatre del Liceu; Amelia Grimaldi
in
Simon Boccanegra
with the Canadian Opera
Company; Desdemona in
Otello
with the Cin-
cinnati Symphony; Gulnara in
Il corsaro
with
Washington Concert Opera; and both Lucrezia
Contarini in
I due Foscari
and in Elvira in
Er-
nani
at Toulouse’s Théâtre du Capitole. Wilson
made her Italian debut last month as a soloist
in Verdi’s Requiem with the La Scala Orches-
tra, and she also recently made her New York
Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orches-
tra debuts as soloist in Bernstein’s Symphony
No. 3 (“Kaddish”). Tamara Wilson previously
appeared in Ravinia’s concert performances of
Mozart’s
Idomeneo
(2012) and
Don Giovanni
(2014).
MICHELLE DEYOUNG,
mezzo-soprano
Growing up in Colorado and California, mez-
zo-soprano Michelle DeYoung was surrounded
by music from an early age with a family that
was talented in many areas of performing.
She attended California State University–
Northridge, designing her own study regimen
that included several aspects of the arts, and in
1992 she won the Metropolitan Opera Nation-
al Auditions and has remained a regular cast
member at the Met ever since. A prototypi-
cal Wagnerian singer, DeYoung has portrayed
many of the composer’s roles, including Kundry
in
Parsifal
, Venus in
Tannhäuser
, Brangäne in
Tristan und Isolde
, and Fricka, Sieglinde, and
Waltraute in the four-opera cycle
Der Ring des
Nibelung
. Her credits also include R. Strauss’s
Salome
(Herodias), Berlioz’s
La damnation de
Faust
(Marguerite) and
Les Troyens
(Didon),
Saint-Saëns’s
Samson et Delilah
(female lead),
Verdi’s
Don Carlos
(Eboli) and
Aida
(Amneris),
Bartók’s
Bluebeard’s Castle
(Judith), Thomas’s
Hamlet
(Gertrude), Stravinsky’s
Oedipus Rex
(Jocaste), and Britten’s
The Rape of Lucretia
(title
role), and she created the role of the Shaman in
Tan Dun’s
The First Emperor
. DeYoung made her
English National Opera debut this past winter,
and in 2015 she was in residence with Wolf Trap
Opera. In addition to the Met, she has regularly
performed with the opera companies of Chica-
go, Philadelphia, Houston, Seattle, Berlin, Paris,
and Tokyo, as well as at Milan’s La Scala, Théâtre
du Châtelet in Paris, and Germany’s Bayreuth
Festival. DeYoung has been a featured artist on
two Grammy-winning recordings:
Les Troyens
with Colin Davis and the London Symphony
Orchestra (2002) and Mahler’s
Kindertoten-
lieder
and Symphony No. 3 with Michael Til-
son Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony
(2004). Her honors also include the Marian An-
derson Award (1995) and an honorary doctorate
from her alma mater (2010). Michelle DeYoung
attended Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute in
1995, making her main-stage debut at the festi-
val the following year, and she was a member of
the RSMI faculty in 2013 and 2016. Tonight she
returns for her eighth season at Ravinia.
JULY 9 – JULY 15, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
113