Vivica Genaux Focuses on Baroque Repertoire in 2008-09 Season

At all
the major music capitals, she is consistently praised not only for the
technical command and beauty of her distinctive voice, but also for her
compelling stage portrayals.

Ms. Genaux balances her appearances worldwide with operatic engagements,
concerts and recitals in new venues and countries, as well as returns to
sites of previous audience and critical triumphs. This season she adds four
additional roles to her pantheon of characters, one each by Vivaldi, Handel,
Hasse and Haydn. She ventures into recording studios twice for Virgin
Classics, first for a new solo-CD and then to complete a recording, begun in
July of 2008, as Antiope in Vivaldi’s Ercole, which she
subsequently performs in the theater for the first time. Her stage personÊ
now total forty, twenty-five of which are trouser-parts.

The 2008-09 season commences with one of three New York area performances,
the first at Tannery Pond Concerts in the Berkshires, in a recital paired
with longtime confrere Craig Rutenberg (August 30). Their program comprises
works of Haydn, Loewe, Garcia/Viardot, Rossini, Serrano, Chueca/Valverde and
GimÈnez. This is followed by a debut at the Festival de FÈnÈtrange for a bill
consisting of arias by Handel & Hasse with Concerto Kˆln (September 5).
For her initial engagement at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, Ms. Genaux
switches male attire and roles from her more usual eponymous hero to the
villain, Polinesso, in Ariodante, with Christophe Rousset and Les
Talens Lyriques (September 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 & 26). Her colleagues
include Danielle de Niese (Ginevra), Maria Grazia Schiavo (Dalinda), Angelika
Kirchschlager (Ariodante), Topi Lehtipuu (Lurcanio), Martin Mairinger
(Odoardo) and Luca Pisaroni (Il Re) in this Lukas Hemleb production. Ms.
Genaux participated at its 2007 premiere at the ThÈ‚tre des Champs-…lysÈes.
In a return to Madrid’s Teatro Real, where she has previously been seen
and heard in Ariodante and Bajazet, she takes great
“pleasure” in going “allegorical” as Il Piacere in a
staged version of the Handel oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo e del
Disinganno
(November 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 14 & 16) conducted by Paul
McCreesh, their premier collaboration. The cast in this J¸rgen Flimm-directed
production also consists of Isabel Rey (La Bellezza), Marijana Mijanovic (Il
Disinganno) and Steve Davislim (Il Tempo). Another role and festival debut
await at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele in a Hasse rarity, as Salome in
Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena, coupled with the
composer’s Miserere in D minor, with Michael Hofstetter at the
helm. Ms. Genaux is joined by Kirsten Blaise, Heidrun Kordes, Jacek
Laszczkowski and Terry Wey (November 23). The mezzo and Concerto Kˆln, an
ensemble with which she often makes music, offer concerts in early-December
in Cologne (3), Lyon (5) and Saarbr¸cken (12), after which she embarks on
another recording project, for Virgin Classics, her seventh for the label.

As 2009 begins, Ms. Genaux, assuming the role of the proud and fierce
Amazon Queen, Antiope, completes a Virgin Classics recording of
Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte, the sixteenth of the
composer’s forty-eight stage works, at studios in Florence with a
starry cast which includes: Diana Damrau, Patrizia Ciofi, Joyce DiDonato,
David Daniels, Philippe Jaroussky, Rolando VillazÛn and Topi Lehtipuu, with
Fabio Biondi/Europa Galante. Back in the United States she concertizes with
Andrea Marcon and members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra on January 14 at
Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. In late-January she sings
Ercole for the first time on stage at Vienna’s Konzerthaus
(25) and then at Paris’ ThÈ‚tre des Champs-…lysÈes (27) with the team
of Biondi/Europa Galante, where her co-stars are Roberta Invernizzi
(Ippolita), Emanuela Galli (Orizia), Stefanie Ir·nyi (Martesia), Romina Basso
(Teseo), Philippe Jaroussky (Alceste), Carlo Allemano (Ercole) & Filippo
Adami (Telamone). In one of her calling-card roles, she plays the practical
and quick-thinking Isabella in L’italiana in Algeri at
Torino’s Teatro Regio (a Company debut) on March 4, 6, 8m, 11 &
15m, where her colleagues include Antonio Siragusa as her rediscovered love,
Lindoro; Roberto di Candia as her would-be suitor, Taddeo; and Lorenzo
Regazzo as the befuddled Bey of Algiers, Mustaf‡. The displays of vocal
virtuosity and madcap antics are led from the pit by Bruno Campanella. For
her initial engagement in Russia, at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
(April 8), she teams up with frequent recital partner Carlos de Aragon, here
conducting the Musica Viva Orchestra, in a mixed-repertoire program. In her
one-time hometown, at the Pittsburgh Opera, she once again dons
Isabella’s traveling gear and shows the residents of Algiers what it
means to tangle with an Italian Girl. Here her fun-loving colleagues are
William Burden (Lindoro), Earle Patriarco (Taddeo) and Paolo Pecchioli
(Mustaf‡), conducted by the company’s Music Director, Antony Walker
(May 2, 5, 8 & 10m). Rejoining Concerto Kˆln, she intones her first notes
in Brazil and Argentina with concert dates in S„o Paulo (May 26 & 27) and
Buenos Aires (June 1 & 2). One more Festival debut awaits her in France,
in St. Denis, with a Marian-themed program featuring Pergolesi’s
Stabat Mater and Handel’s Il pianto di Maria, in
which she is paired once more with Maestro Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques
(June 23). For her first foray with the music of Haydn, Ms. Genaux assumes
the part of the aptly-named Costanza in a semi-staged run of
L’isola disabitata, a tale of shipwrecked romance and mistaken
identity. For Ms. Genaux, this represents a new role and orchestra
collaboration with Jonathan Nott and the Bamberger Symphoniker (July 8, 9, 11
& 12). Her season comes to a close at New York’s Caramoor Festival
where she portrays the avenging warrior-prince, Arsace, in Rossini’s
Semiramide, here sharing the stage with another fellow bel canto
specialist, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, among others (August 1). In this, her
ninth engagement there (following on the heels of La Cenerentola,
La donna del lago, Lucrezia Borgia, La gazza
ladra
, as well as two recitals and two concerts), she is reunited with
Will Crutchfield, who has been a major force in her career from the
beginning.

For further information, please access Ms. Genaux’s websites at: www.vivicagenaux.com and www.fanfaire.com/genaux


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