2008-2009 Performances: Pearl Fishers

Pearl Fishers

(Les pêcheurs de perles)

February 14, 2009, 7:00 PM

February 15, 2009, 3:00 PM

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

Stars

	LARISA YUDINA, Leila Russian soprano Larisa Yudina is a prize-winner at the International Diaghilev Young Opera Singers’ Competition (1997, Perm) and the International Rimsky-Korsakov Vocalists’ Competition (1998 and 2000, St Petersburg). She also received the Elena Obraztsova special prize at the IV International Elena Obraztsova Young Opera Singers’ Competition (2005, St Petersburg) as well as a diploma from the Russian Ministry of Culture for best performance at the Mariinsky Theatre in the 2000-2001 season. In 2006 she was nominated for a Golden Mask, Russia’s highest theatre prize, for “best female role” in Rossini’s opera Il viaggio a Reims (as the Contessa di Folleville). Since 1998 she has been a soloist at Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre, and she has performed throughout Europe and the United States. She previously appeared with WGO in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor.
	GENARO MENDEZ, Nadir. Genaro Mendez is an accomplished tenor who has performed many roles across the country, including Alfredo in La Traviata, Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, Tamino in Die Zauberflote, Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, Ramiro in La Cenerentola, and Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro. He also maintains an active concert and recital schedule. In addition to his active performing career, Dr. Mendez serves as an Assistant Professor of Voice at the University of Kansas. He previously appeared with Wichita Grand Opera as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet.
	PAUL SMITH, Nadir (cover) 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.
	WILLIAM BROWNING, Zurga. William Browning, Kansas baritone, spent the summer of 2007 in San Francisco, where he was a member of San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Opera Program. Last season with Wichita Grand Opera he appeared as Benoit and Alcindoro in La Boheme, Valentin in Faust, and the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance. In previous seasons he performed the roles of the Marquis D’Obigny in La Traviata, Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet, Count Ceprano in Rigoletto, Yakaside in Madama Butterfly, 3rd Priest in Die Zauberflöte, and 1st Man in I Pagliacci. An alum of Wichita Grand Opera’s Young Artist Program, this is his second season as a Resident Artist.
	SCOTT CONNER, Nourabad Scott Conner, from Olathe, Kansas, received his Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music. In January of 2008, Scott made his professional debut as Colline in La Boheme with the Naples Philharmonic in Naples, Florida. Since then, Scott has sung roles with Mobile Opera, Kansas City Lyric Opera, and Opera New Jersey, among others. Last season Scott appeared with Wichita Grand Opera as Colline in La Boheme and Wagner in Faust. In December 2008, Scott will be making his International debut singing the role of Colline with Lviv State Opera and Odessa National Opera in the Ukraine. This is Scott’s second season as a Wichita Grand Opera Young Artist.

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

HERBERT KELLNER Stage Director (Pearl Fishers) Mr. Kellner comes to Wichita directly from directing productions of The Pearl Fishers and Barber of Seville for Lyric Opera of Chicago. Kellner made his directing debut with Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1988 with Puccini’s Tosca. He has also staged Tristan and Isolde and Wagner’s Ring Cycle for the Lyric Opera. He was the resident Stage director and acting coach for the Lyric Opera Young American Artists program from 1984 through 1985. Mr. Kellner has directed at Glynbourne, the Theatre Du Genieve (Switzerland), L’Opera de Montreal, the Los Angeles Opera, Portland Opera, and San Diego Opera, among others. Mr.Kellner has been involved with the world premieres of such operas as Paradise Lost, McTeague, and Therese Raquin. Over the years Mr. Kellner has assisted and studied with such directors as Frank Corsaro, Jean Pierre Ponnelle, John Copely, Sir Peter Hall and August Everding.

Full Cast

WGO Orchestra and Chorus

Cast of Characters

Chorus: Villagers

*WGO Resident Artist                ^†WGO Young Artist

 (Production and Artists subject to change)

This performance is sponsored in part by:
Dr. & Mrs. Joseph Galichia, Bank of America,
and the Garvey Kansas Foundation

Opera Story

Click here to view the full synopsis.

Composer Bio

Georges Bizet was born at 28 rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in the 9th arrondissement of Paris in 1838. He was registered with the legal name Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, but he was baptised on 16 March 1840 with the first name Georges, and he was was always known thereafter as Georges Bizet. His father was an amateur singer and composer, and his mother was the sister of the famous singing teacher François Delsarte. He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday.

His first symphony, the Symphony in C Major, was written in 1855, when he was still only sixteen, evidently as a student assignment. It seems that Bizet completely forgot about it himself, and it was not discovered again until 1935, in the archives of the Conservatory library. Upon its first performance (February 26, 1935), it was immediately hailed as a junior masterwork and a welcome addition to the early Romantic period repertoire. A delightful work (and a prodigious one, from a seventeen-year-old boy), the symphony is noteworthy for bearing an amazing stylistic resemblance to the music of Franz Schubert, whose work was virtually unknown in Paris at that time (with the possible exception of a few of his songs).

At the Conservatoire Bizet studied under Fromental Halévy, whose daughter Geneviève he married in 1869. Halévy died in 1864, leaving his last opera Noé unfinished. Bizet completed it, but it was not performed until 1885, ten years after Bizet's own death.

In 1857, a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the music composition scholarship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera Don Procopio (1858-59). There he also composed his only major sacred work, Te Deum (1858), which he submitted to the Prix Rodrigues competition, a contest for Prix de Rome winners only. Bizet failed to win the Prix, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971. He made two attempts to write another symphony in 1859, but destroyed the manuscripts in December of that year. Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life.

His mother died shortly after his return to Paris. He composed the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) for the Theatre Lyrique in 1863, which was an initial failure. He followed it with La jolie fille de Perth (premiered also in the Theatre Lyrique, in 1867), a symphony titled Roma (1868), and Jeux d'enfants (Children's games) for piano duet (1871).

The popular L'Arlésienne  was originally produced as incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet, first performed on 1 October 1872. Bizet himself derived a suite from the music (first performed 10 November 1872), and Ernest Guiraud later arranged a second suite; both these suites contain considerable rewriting of the original score.

That year (22 May 1872) also saw the production of the romantic opera Djamileh, which is often seen as a precursor to Carmen. His overture Patrie was written in 1873 (it had no connection with Victorien Sardou's play Patrie!).

Carmen (1875) is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by Prosper Mérimée. Bizet composed the title role for a mezzo-soprano. Carmen was not initially well-received but praise for it eventually came from well-known contemporaries including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns and Peter Illych Tchaikovsky. Johannes Brahms attended over twenty performances of it, and considered it the greatest opera produced in Europe since the Franco-Prussian war. The views of these composers proved to be prophetic, as Carmen has since become one of the most popular works in the entire operatic repertoire. However, Bizet did not live to see its success. He died from a heart attack at the age of 36 in Bougival (Yvelines), about 10 miles west of Paris. His death occurred on his sixth wedding anniversary, only a few months after Carmen's first performances. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.