Thomas Hampson Makes Role Debut as Scarpia
in New Production of Puccini’s Tosca at Zurich Opera on March 29

By -

Next US Appearances Include Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala (March 15)
and Carnegie Hall with Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin (May 13)

Rounding out more than six months of performances in the US on Sunday, March 15, Thomas Hampson will appear as Amfortas in the final scene of Parsifal opposite Plácido Domingo, in the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala. Since performing on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s season this past September, the great baritone has starred in two leading roles at the Met – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Massenet’s Athanael (in Thaïs) – both to great acclaim. At the end of March, Hampson returns to Zurich, Switzerland for an important role debut. He will play the part of perhaps the most infamous villain in the operatic world when he sings Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca. The opera will be staged in a new production by Robert Carsen, with Emily Magee in the title role and Jonas Kaufmann as Cavaradossi, conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi.

Hampson has looked forward to singing Scarpia for a long time, since the core Italian repertoire, especially Verdi and Puccini, has become increasingly important to him in recent years. He comments:

“I am truly looking forward to the challenge of being Scarpia. He’s one of the darkest personalities I have ever tried to interpret; yet there are dimensions to his convoluted personality that I hope to be able to reveal as I perceive them. The subtleties Puccini and his librettist invested in this amazing character are sometimes entrapped in theatrical clichés I’ll do my best to avoid. And it will be great to be back at the Zurich Opera House, which I have had a very long and fruitful relationship with and consider to be one of my musical homes.”

At the outset of this season, Hampson gave four Zurich performances of one of his favorite Verdi roles, Rodrigo in Don Carlo. Last season, he added two Verdi roles to his large Met repertoire, with the title character in Simon Boccanegra and his role debut as Don Carlo in Ernani, both to enthusiastic reviews. He also had a resounding success last season at the San Francisco Opera with his first American performances of Verdi’s Macbeth.

After his Zurich Scarpia performances, Thomas Hampson returns to another of his favorite roles – that of recitalist, performing with frequent piano partner Wolfram Rieger in Germany and Portugal. He will also sing orchestrated Hugo Wolf songs on texts by Goethe and Mörike with the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Dohnányi, in Hamburg and at the Prague Spring Festival. On May 13, Hampson returns to New York for his second Carnegie Hall appearance of the season, when he performs Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Then, on May 19, Hampson will appear as the only soloist in a gala evening at Dusseldorf’s elegant Deutsche Oper am Rhein. June finds him back in London opposite frequent stage-partner Renée Fleming in Verdi’s i at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with the Opera’s chief conductor, Antonio Pappano, in the pit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more