Aida

February 4, 2009, 7:00 PM

Stars  |  Conductor  |  Director  |  Full Cast  |  Opera Story   |  Composer Bio

Stars

	OLGA CHERNISHEVA, Aida. Chernisheva’s career highlights include Maria in Mazeppa, Polina in Pique Dame, Brigitta in Iolanta, Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress, Mlle. Jouvenot in Adriana Lecouvreur, and Ninetta in Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges with the Bolshoi Opera; and Musetta in La Bohème with the Bolshoi Opera, Sweden's Malmo Opera Theater, and San Francisco Opera Center's Merola Opera Program. Concert highlights have included the title role in Rachmaninoff's Francesca da Rimini with Dicapo Opera Theatre; Bach's Mass in B-minor at the Nizhny Novgorod Concert Hall, at the Grand Hall of the Moscow State Conservatory, and with Russia's Saratov Opera Theater; Bach's Easter Oratorio at Moscow's Cathedral Catholic Church; Mahler's Fourth Symphony at the Grand Hall of the Moscow State Conservatory; and Carmina Burana at the Grand Hall of Moscow's Gnessin College.
	VIOREL SAPLACAN, Radames. Romanian lyrico-spinto tenor Viorel Saplacan currently performs as a principal soloist in Bucharest with the Romanian National Opera, with the State Opera of Timosoara, and with opera companies throughout Romania and in other major Eastern and Western European cities. His repertoire includes: Cavaradossi in Tosca, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Calaf in Turandot, Alfredo in La Traviata, Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana, Canio in Pagliacci, Don Jose in Carmen, Radames in Aida, and the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto.
	GALIA IBRAGIMOVA, Amneris. Russian mezzo-soprano Galia Ibragimova is a laureate of the Vincenzo Bellini Competition (Italy, 1995) and the Belvedere Competition (Vienna, 1996), and the winner of the 1997 Angelica Catalani Competition (Italy). Since 1998 she has been a soloist with the State Opera of Prague. Her appearances there have included the title role in Carmen, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Azucena in Il Trovatore, Amneris in Aida, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, Olga in Eugene Onegin, and others. Her chief international triumphs have included guest appearances as Amneris in Japan (with José Cura as Radames, 2001). Taking part in the Wagner Festival at Wels, Austria, she was Waltraute in Die Walkure (2001); at Dublin's Opera Festival she made a guest appearance in the role of Countess Coigny (Giordano's Andrea Chénier, 2002); and at the Opera Festival of Gars, Austria, she sang Carmen (2003).
	SCOTT CONNER, The King of Egypt Scott Conner, from Olathe, Kansas, made his professional operatic debut singing the role of Colline in La Bohème opposite Marcello Giordani with the WGO in February 2008. Scott followed this success with the role of Wagner in Faust opposite Samuel Ramey, also with the WGO, and several roles at Mobile Opera, The Kansas City Lyric Opera, and Opera New Jersey, among others. A WGO Young Artist, Scott recently won the Metropolitan Opera’s District competition. In December 2008, he will make his international debut singing the role of Colline with Lviv State Opera and Odessa National Opera in the Ukraine. Scott’s upcoming engagements include the roles of Nourabad in The Pearl Fishers and Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville with Wichita Grand Opera this season, as well as the roles of Masetto and Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni with Cleveland Opera in November of 2009. This will be Scott’s second season as a Wichita Grand Opera Young Artist.
	PAUL SMITH, Messenger His performance career has brought him to more than ten countries including engagements with the Deutsches Nationaltheater (Weimar), Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Düsseldorf), the Prague State Opera, Théâtre des Arts Opera de Normandie, and the Cairo Opera. His operatic repertoire includes such important roles as Romeo, the Duke, Faust, Almaviva, Pinkerton, Lensky, Belmonte, Ferrando, and Tamino. Comfortable on the musical stage as well, he performed Piangi in both the London and Hamburg productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. He joined the faculty at Wichita State University in the fall of 2008.

Conductor

Ekhart Wycik is the Principal Conductor of the Dortmund Opera, and the Deputy Music Director. He made his U.S. opera debut conducting Wichita Grand Opera’s 2006 production of The Magic Flute and he has previously conducted La Traviata and The Pirates of Penzance with the WGO. His upcoming performances in Dortmund include Salome, Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci, Rigoletto, and The Rake’s Progress. He debuted this year with the Berlin Philharmonic and was also invited to the Salzburg Festspiele. The Pearl Fishers will be Maestro Wycik’s fifth appearance with Wichita Grand Opera.

Director

SHAYNA LEAHY Stage Director (Aida) Shayna Leahy began working for the Wichita Grand Opera during WGO’s 2003 production of Carmen, when she served as assistant to Stage Director Margaret Ann Pent and Music Director Eugene Kohn. She subsequently filled many roles with the WGO, including production coordinator, stage manager, and again as Assistant Director under John Stephens during Pirates of Penzance. In addition to her engagements as a Stage Director, she is the Director of Vocal Music & Theory at Highland Community College and holds the positions of Music Director and Stage Director with the Hiawatha Theatre Society. Last season she was awarded the David Farrar Internship for Stage Direction as part of the Martina Arroyo Prelude to Performance program, where she was Assistant Director for Un Ballo in maschera under Laura Alley.

Full Cast

EKHART WYCIK
Conductor

SHAYNA LEAHY
Stage Director

WGO Orchestra and Chorus

Cast of Characters

Chorus: Priests, Priestesses, Soldiers, Slaves, and Egyptian Populace

*WGO Resident Artist                ^†WGO Young Artist

(Production and Artists subject to change)

This performance is sponsored in part by:
Mary Lou & Hal Ross, Dr. Alvin & Alice Smith,
and Carolyn A. Dillon

Opera Story

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Composer Bio

Born in 1813 in the Italian village of Le Roncole near Busseto, Giuseppe Verdi spent his early years studying the organ. By the age of seven, he had become an organist at San Michele Arcangelo. It was there that the young Verdi was an altar boy and, according to myth, his mother saved him from the French in 1814. In 1823, Verdi moved to Busseto and attended the music school run by Antonio Provesi. By the age of 13, he was an assistant conductor of the Busseto orchestra. After finishing the school, Verdi applied for admission to the Milan Conservatory. He was rejected for admission, although one of the examiners suggested that he "forget about the Conservatory and choose a maestro in the city." Verdi studied composition in Milan with Vincenzo Lavigna, a composer and the maestro at La Scala. Verdi bounced back and forth between Milan and Busseto until he was named maestro of the Busseto Philharmonic in March 1836. 

By May 1836, he had married childhood sweetheart, Margherita Barezzi, his greatest benefactor's daughter. He returned to Milan several years later, this time with a young family. 

Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was brought to the stage at La Scala in November 1839 and ran for multiple performances. The noted Ricordi firm published Oberto and, based upon his initial operatic effort, Verdi won a contract for three additional operas. He began work on his next opera, Un Giorno di Regno, but was interrupted when, one by one, the Verdis fell ill. A little over the course of a year, Verdi lost his son, his daughter, and his beloved wife to illness. Unfortunately, Un Giorno was a complete failure. 

Verdi vowed never to compose another comedy and developed a fatalistic belief in inescapable destiny. Even so, the director at La Scala kept faith with Verdi, who later declared that with his next work, Nabucco, "my musical career really began." At dress rehearsals for Nabucco in the La Scala theater, carpenters making repairs to the house gradually stopped hammering and, seating themselves on scaffolding and ladders, listened with rapt attention to what the composer considered a lackluster chorus rendering of "Va, pensiero." At the close of the number, the workers pounded the woodwork with cries of "Bravo, bravo, viva il maestro!" The opening of Nabucco was a triumph. Verdi was famous, commanding a higher fee than any other composer of his time.

I Lombardi followed Nabucco and won an unprecedented victory over Austrian censors. Verdi's triumph in retaining the libretto and melodic themes the censors had hoped to ban as "religious" in nature forged the composer's lifelong reputation as an ideological hero of the Italian people. This would be the first of his many battles with censors for artistic freedom.

Over the next seven years, the composer penned ten additional operas of varied success, gradually making the transition between two distinct eras of Verdi composition. Initially captive of the "bel canto" style and heir to Donizetti's artistic throne, Verdi continually experimented to produce his own operatic genre in which melodic drama and identifiable musical essence of character took center stage as an equal to vocal purity and elegance.

It was an inspired stroke of boldness about which Verdi commented in explaining the innovative core of his work, Il Trovatore, "I think (if I'm not mistaken) that I have done well; but at any rate I have done it in the way that I felt it." In saying so, he defined his own creative hallmark. Although a musical genius, Verdi composed spontaneously from the heart. A brilliantly schooled musician, he placed emotional sensibility above intellect in all that he wrote. In the process, he created the remarkable marriage of dramatic characterization and vocal power, an indelible artistic signature.

The creation of an operatic tour de force based upon his ingenious artistic formulation assured Verdi's immortality, beginning in 1851 with Rigoletto, followed soon after by Il Trovatore, La Traviata, and ultimately in 1871, by Aida. Even without the masterpieces that followed - Simon Boccanegra, Un Ballo in Maschera, La Forza del Destino, and Don Carlos or his great Requiem Mass - the Maestro could have afforded to rest on his musical achievements and stand unchallenged as the premier operatic composer of any age. In fact, with the success of Aida, Verdi seemed to have abandoned composing altogether, producing no new works for fifteen years.

Fortunately for posterity, an electrifying libretto, Otello, created by poet Arrigo Boito, brought the composer out of his self-imposed retirement. The opening of Otello in February of 1887 attracted an international audience to Milan for a dramatic event which ended only after the citizenry had showered Verdi with gifts and applause throughout twenty curtain calls and towed his carriage to the hotel. Public festivities continued until dawn.

In 1893, with the premiere of Falstaff, Verdi and his adoring audience repeated the entire sequence of events at La Scala - all in honor of a comedy he had vowed as a young man never to write. The maestro finally retreated to his country home in Sant' Agata with his second wife, singer Giuseppina Strepponi. They spent several peaceful years in retirement until her death in 1897. His wife's death left Verdi in a state of unbearable grief. He immediately fled Sant' Agata for the Grand Hotel in Milan and, after four unhappy years, Verdi died in 1901, the victim of a massive stroke. Verdi's death left all Italy in mourning. He still is revered throughout the music world as the greatest of operatic composers and, more particularly, in Italy as a patriotic hero and champion of human rights.