For Immediate Release
Contact: Cohn Dutcher Associates
Lois Cohn, 917.339.7187, lcohn@cohndutcher.com
Dan Dutcher, 917.339.7157, ddutcher@cohndutcher.com
Laura Malick, 917.339.7183, lmalick@cohndutcher.com
David Mayhew, 203.533.5621, david@davidmayhew.net

CARAMOOR INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
2009 SUMMER SEASON

13TH SEASON OF BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR

Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore
Critical Edition by Alberto Zedda
Lawrence Brownlee, Georgia Jarman,
Markus Beam, Marco Nistico

Rossini's Semiramide
Critical Edition by Philip Gossett
Angela Meade, Vivica Genaux, Lawrence Brownlee,
Daniel Mobbs, Christopher Dickerson

With the Orchestra of St. Luke's led by Will Crutchfield

Katonah, NY - The thirteenth Bel Canto at Caramoor season - an annual operatic exploration that Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times calls "an essential contribution" – will present Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore on Saturday, July 18 at 8:00pm and Rossini's Semiramide on Friday, July 31 at 8:00pm.  Both operas will be sung in Italian with English supertitles and will be performed in concert in Caramoor's acoustically superb Venetian Theater.  Will Crutchfield, Caramoor's Director of Opera, will conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love) continues Caramoor's recent series of familiar classics renewed and reanimated by the study of 19th-century bel canto style, which has surprised and charmed audiences in recent Caramoor revivals of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Traviata and Il Trovatore.  With Semiramide, the program carries forward its superlative and widely praised presentation of Rossini's serious operas, beginning with the inaugural production of La Donna del Lago in 1997. 

Both operas will feature music new even to operagoers who know and love them, added by their composers for Paris productions of the two works: an alternate soprano aria for L'elisir and a haunting death scene for the tragic heroine of Semiramide. 

DEBUTS AND RETURNS
Headlining both operas will be the star tenor Lawrence Brownlee, whose Metropolitan Opera debut last season won standing ovations and unanimous rave reviews ("an astonishing technician who rightly brought the house down," reported the Times of London).  Already since his professional debut in 2002, Mr. Brownlee has appeared at Milan's La Scala, London's Covent Garden, Vienna's Staatsoper, Madrid's Teatro Real and numerous other theaters worldwide.  His calling-card repertoire has centered on Rossini, and Idreno in Semiramide will be his eighth role by that master of bel canto (he will later return to the Met in Armida opposite Renee Fleming).  Meanwhile, Caramoor audiences will hear him take on the classic part of the love-sick Nemorino for the first time anywhere.

Two other Caramoor debuts are featured.  Angela Meade, also a recent Met debutant (as Elvira in Ernani, and slated to return to the house as Donizetti's Anna Bolena), will sing the Babylonian queen Semiramide, one of history's greatest prima donna roles.  Ms. Meade was a prizewinner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 2007, when The New York Times reported at the winner's concert that she "powered out a `Casta Diva' from Bellini's Norma that left everyone breathless."  Caramoor's Will Crutchfield was in the audience for that concert, and called Ms. Meade's agent the following morning to book her for this Semiramide.  She has gone on in the meantime taking prizes at nearly every major vocal competition worldwide and had her first major professional outing as another celebrated queen, Elisabeth, in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux at the Dallas Opera in January. 

Young American baritone Markus Beam - who, like Ms. Meade, is an alumnus of Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts - will sing Sergeant Belcore in L'elisir, a new role in his growing repertory.  Mr. Beam has been heard in the U.S. with the Glimmerglass and Wolf Trap operas and is currently a resident artist with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he has sung repertory from Verdi and Gounod to Kurt Weill and Nicholas Maw.  "Belcore is a virtuoso role, written for a singer with brilliant technique," comments Crutchfield, "and that aspect is usually neglected when companies cast any standard baritone who looks good in a uniform.  We will have one who looks good and is also a true virtuoso."

The remaining roles are sung by Caramoor's "A-list" of returning artists.   Virtuoso mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, a mainstay of the early Caramoor seasons that introduced her to New York area audiences, makes a highly-anticipated return as Arsace in Semiramide.  In the intervening decade, her numerous recordings, DVDs, television and film appearances, and sold-out concert appearances, not to mention new productions of operas by Handel, Rossini, Hasse, Vivaldi, and others in dozens of major theaters, have established her as one of the world's undisputed superstars of bel canto and Baroque opera.  Her pre-Caramoor schedule for 2009 is typical:  a Vivaldi opera recording for Virgin Classic; a Carnegie concert with the Venice Baroque Orchestra; concerts with Europa Galante in Cracow, Vienna, and Paris; runs of Rossini's Italiana in Torino and Pittsburgh, a Moscow debut with the Musica Viva orchestra; a South American tour with Concerto Köln, festival concerts in France and Germany, and - a new departure - Andrew T. Miller's Birth of Christ, in which she joins Kristin Chenoweth and Andrea Bocelli for a Vatican performance before the Pope. 

Soprano Georgia Jarman, whose Caramoor career began with the role of the Second Lady in a young-artist production of Die Zauberflöte and has gone on to include major roles in Bellini's Sonnambula, Handel's Deidamia, and Verdi's Traviata, most recently wowed audiences by holding her own against the earth-shaking Tancredi of Ewa Podles.  In the meantime her Violetta, Donna Anna, Mimi, and Tales of Hoffmann heroines have been snapped up by companies in Boston, Palm Beach, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and by many others.  Her frequent colleague at Caramoor and elsewhere has been bass-baritone Daniel Mobbs, returning for his eleventh role at the Venetian Theater.  Mobbs' Figaro lit up the stage in last season's Barbiere di Siviglia, winning praise in Opera News for "wit and charm, thrilling vocalism, lightning-quick presence and bright, clean sound."  Earlier that year he addressed the opposite side of Rossini with the heroic Guillaume Tell at the Polish National Opera, and now he completes the triangle with that composer's greatest villain, Assur, who aspires to the throne of the king he has murdered.  Among his recent successes elsewhere have been the multiple bass roles in Purcell's King Arthur in Mark Morris's New York City Opera production, and the "other" Figaro - Mozart's - with Palm Beach Opera, garnering widespread critical acclaim in each.  Marco Nistico scored a surprise hit as the comic Fra Melitone in last season's Forza del Destino (Opera News: "he showed what a gleaming, first-rate voice can do with the part"), and returns for another buffo role, his first Dulcamara.  Otherwise, Mr. Nistico continues in his normal realm of major baritone parts; he is currently in Sarasota singing Rodrigue in Verdi's Don Carlos, having sung the Doge in I Due Foscari last year at the same house. 

A DIVO AMONG SCHOLARS
Once again, a special feature of the season will be the participation of Philip Gossett, the world's most renowned scholar of Italian opera, the General Editor of the ongoing critical editions of both Rossini's and Verdi's works, and the author of the Critical Edition of Semiramide that will be presented this summer.  Professor Gossett is the recipient of innumerable awards and honors, prominently including the Italian Government's highest civilian honor (Cavaliere della Gran Croce) and a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of his operatic work.  He is the volume editor for many individual operas and is the author of the long-awaited book Divas and Scholars, which, in its turn, has garnered major prizes including the American Musicological Society's Kinkeldey Award.
 
In announcing Professor Gossett's return following his participation in the 2008 season, Caramoor's Opera Director Will Crutchfield said that "Philip Gossett has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager first learning this magnificent repertory and he is a hero to everyone who cares about Italian opera.  It has been my great privilege to argue with him for at least 20 years and to learn from him for even longer.  I am thrilled that we have the opportunity to bring his insights to our Young Artists and our public."

THE OPERAS
Who could have guessed that, writing in a hurry between the 36th and 38th of his nearly seventy operas, for a secondary theater in Milan while he was in town for something more important at La Scala, Donizetti would produce one of the four or five most beloved comic operas in history?  And who could have imagined that, when he tossed a free-standing tenor aria into the last act (there is no recitative or introductory scene; Nemorino just walks on stage unannounced and begins "Una furtiva lagrima") he would be penning his most celebrated single composition?  L'Elisir d'amore, composed in about six weeks early in 1832 for a cast of mostly little-known singers, has been a success and attracted the stars ever since.  It strikes a perfect balance between whimsy (the idea of the love potion), low comedy (Nemorino's drunken scene) and sentiment (throughout).  Its durable stereotypes (the lovesick peasant lad, the sophisticated girl who loves him, the swaggering sergeant, the charlatan doctor) are enlivened by Donizetti's light and affectionate touch with the music and his wealth of truly memorable melody. 

Semiramide could hardly offer a greater contrast.  It was not at all tossed off but was rather the carefully meditated culmination of a long series of grand operas by the leading composer of the age:  Rossini's last opera for Italy, in fact.  It is almost Baroque in its grandeur and in the stately unfolding of its magnificent musical ideas.  Crutchfield says of Semiramide that "it is not so much a drama as a single moment of the utmost dramatic tension, sustained and elaborated until the tension must break into catastrophe."  The opera has almost no plot: one terrible event, the murder of a king by his own queen, has happened before the curtain rises, and one more - expiation through the queen's death at her own son's hand - must happen at the close.  The dénouement is foreshadowed and broadly hinted at throughout, starting from Act One scene one.  What passes in between is almost an oratorio, but one of immense musical and emotional force.

Elisir with its tunes, its genially timeless story, its honest humor and its sympathetically written vocal parts adapted itself easily to changing tastes over the years.  Semiramide could survive only as long as grandeur and its embodiment through vocal virtuosity still seemed culturally relevant; it was already a rarity when the Paris Opera dusted it off late in Rossini's life (1860), and it maintained a presence on the fringes of the repertory until around the 1890s as a vehicle for singers like Adelina Patti, who was the last to sing it in New York before its long disappearance.  The spell was broken by Joan Sutherland, who took the opera around the world in the 1960s in performances that, for most listeners, represented the first true revival of the "serious" Rossini.   

RE-INVENTING TRADITION
In its earliest seasons, Bel Canto at Caramoor concentrated in its early season on little-known works, but once its style and reputation were established, a series of revivals of familiar repertory staples was initiated with La Traviata in 2005.  Marion Lignana Rosenberg described that revival in Newsday as revealing the opera "in a strikingly unfamiliar guise" and "a performance that soared."   The idea behind the programming, Will Crutchfield explained, is that "the bel canto style that we are trying to recover here stands out even more clearly to the listener against a familiar background."

La Traviata has been followed by similar reexaminations of Il Trovatore, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and now L'elisir d'amore.  After last year's Barbiere, Peter G. Davis wrote in Musical America that "a note-by-note comparison of texts was hardly necessary to recognize what a difference in tone, texture, and musical wit the Caramoor performance offered.  The lightness of touch, the fizzy solo writing, the piquant blend of colors, and the graceful phrasing sounded absolutely fresh and new under Crutchfield."

"A problem in well-known Italian operas," says Crutchfield, "is that people have tended to see a choice between two rigid options:  doing exactly what is written in the score, or doing what is thought of as `traditional.'  The trouble with the first is that the music was written for freedom and improvisation and depends on that for its life.  The problem with the second is that our tradition in opera became distorted and rigid in its own way, as the repertory got older and farther away from us and as the new invention of recording started to replace collective memory. So if we really love the Italian tradition, we have to re-invent it."  He gives an example drawn from this year's repertory.  "There is a place for a cadenza at the end of `Una furtiva lagrima,' and up until Caruso's record became a best-seller, every tenor would sing his own cadenza.  You can hear a lot of them on records made by tenors older than Caruso.  But between then and now, more than 200 tenors have recorded the aria, and they all sing Caruso's cadenza.  People call this the `traditional' version, but it's actually the death of tradition.  What we are doing is trying to bring it back to life."

SPECIAL PRE-OPERA EVENTS FOR TICKET-HOLDERS
Part of the effort to restore that life is carried out in Caramoor's celebrated Bel Canto Young Artists program, which has already aided in the preparation of many soloists active on the international scene today.  These select young singers serve as understudies for the main roles, sing smaller roles in the evening performances, and train intensively with Crutchfield, Gossett, and Caramoor's musical staff.  Ticket holders can hear these stars of tomorrow in our popular pre-opera events, along with lectures and discussions.  

DONIZETTI'S L'ELISIR D'AMORE - Saturday, July 18

3:30pm  The Hack Who Was a Genius
150 years after his death, the musical world is still taking stock of Gaetano Donizetti.  His productivity was so astonishing that when he showed up in Paris and immediately started to write for all four of its active opera houses, Berlioz wrote "it is a veritable invasion; one can no longer speak of the theaters of Paris, but only of the theaters of M. Donizetti."  For many years, most commentators thought of him as a skilled artisan but denied him a place among the great.  However, his profound influence on Verdi alone would be enough to refute such an assessment.  More recently, posterity has begun to sort through his approximately 70 operas and even to glance at his many works in other forms.  Philip Gossett and Will Crutchfield will present a dialogue about Donizetti's place in history, supplemented by excerpts performed by the Bel Canto Young Artists.

4:30pm  Laugh a Little
To go by the textbooks, it seems as though Italian comic opera simply closed up shop after the work of its greatest masters, Rossini and Donizetti.   In fact it didn't - it's just that Verdi, who dominated the scene, wasn't participating.  In this recital we will hear the delightful composers who kept audiences laughing in Verdi's shadow:  Usiglio, Cagnoni, Petrella, and The Brothers Ricci (yes, sometimes they composed jointly).  The Bel Canto Young Artists will be accompanied by pianist Rachelle Jonck.

5:30pm  Dinner Break

7:00pm  Pre-Opera Lecture - Philip Gossett introduces L'elisir d'amore

ROSSINI'S SEMIRAMIDE - Friday, July 31

5:00pm  Rossini and his Singers
Rossini was himself a good enough singer to appear often in public concerts, and his wife - the original Semiramide - was a celebrated diva.  Throughout his career, he tailored his music to the greatest vocal artists of the day.  This recital of intriguing rarities presents music - by Rossini and other composers, and sometimes by the singers themselves - that give us hints of the art of Colbran, Nozzari, Cinti-Damoreau, Pelligrini, Fodor, Naldi, Garcia, Bordogni, Pisaroni, Pasta, Rubini, and the other stars of Rossini's constellation.  Philip Gossett and Will Crutchfield host the program; Rachelle Jonck accompanies the Bel Canto Young Artsits.

6:00pm  Dinner Break

7:00pm  Pre-Opera Lecture - Philip Gossett introduces Semiramide

ABOUT BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR
Under the leadership of Director of Opera Will Crutchfield, Caramoor's renowned Bel Canto at Caramoor is in its 13th season of outstanding opera programming during the 2009 Caramoor International Music Festival.  Bel Canto at Caramoor began in 1997 with Rossini's La Donna del Lago, starring Vivica Genaux, Marguerite Krull, Bruce Fowler and Matthew Chellis.  At its inception, diva Marilyn Horne predicted success:  "These singers are very lucky to have Will Crutchfield," she told the press before the summer festival.  The New York Times quickly agreed, praising "a palpable conviction that Rossini's serious operas are not static vehicles for elaborate vocal display, but elegant and humane musical dramas" in a review of the opening.  The Wall Street Journal reported in 1997, "Mr. Crutchfield brought his sure sense of bel canto style to bear upon Lucrezia Borgia, and the semi-staged concert version at Caramoor's Venetian Theater was both delightful and thought-provoking...its dark (yes, Verdian) intensity is certainly a revelation."  The Financial Times added its praise following 1999's La Gazza ladra, lauding the virtuosic young cast and hailing Crutchfield's style as "a fine balance of bravado, intensity, sensitivity and scholarly savoir-faire." 

Ever since, growing ranks of critics from the national and international press have maintained that consensus, and capacity audiences have filled Caramoor's 1700-seat Venetian Theater.  The flagship summer productions have included three operas each by Bellini and Rossini, two each by Donizetti and Verdi, and individual works by Handel, Gluck, Francesco Conti, and Pauline Viardot, along with a wide range of concerts. 

Meanwhile a broad repertory has been performed with young artists in the intimate Music Room, ranging from a cycle of the Mozart Da Ponte operas to Verdi's early comedy Un Giorno di Regno.  The prominent young singers tapped early by Caramoor and Crutchfield are too numerous to name, but a few of them include – besides the artists already mentioned – Takesha Kizart, Inna Dukach, Maria Zifchak, Indra Thomas, Frank Porretta, Kate Aldrich, Kenneth Tarver, Mari Moriya, Sarah Coburn, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Krisztina Szabo, Yeghishe Manucharyan, John Osborn, and Alexandra Deshorties.  Established artists like Ewa Podleœ , June Anderson, and Sumi Jo have been added to the mix after Crutchfield worked with them in other theaters, and a young artists program added in 1999 has since grown into the "Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists," a prestigious full-scale training program that has touched the lives of dozens of singers.  The New York Times has called the series "essential," and ten years of achievement show why:  Caramoor is now recognized as a major international center for the interpretation of this important repertory and the development of the singers it requires.

ABOUT CARAMOOR
Caramoor is the legacy of Walter and Lucie Rosen, who built their summer home - now known as the historic Rosen House at Caramoor - and filled it with their treasures.  Walter Rosen was the master planner for the Caramoor estate, bringing to reality his dream of creating a place to showcase his vast collection and to entertain friends from around the world.  Their musical evenings were the seeds of today's Caramoor International Music Festival.  Realizing the pleasure their friends took in the beauty of Caramoor – the house with its art collection, the gardens, and the musical programs on summer evenings – in 1946 the Rosens established a public charity to open Caramoor to the community.

Lucie Rosen survived her husband by seventeen years.  During those years, she expanded the Music Festival: the Spanish Courtyard was used as a setting for musical events, as it is today, and, under her direction, the great stage of the Venetian Theater was built.

Caramoor is often described as "a Garden of Great Music" where audiences are invited to come early, explore the beautiful grounds, take a tour of the Rosen House, visit the gift shop, enjoy a pre-concert picnic, and discover beautiful music in the relaxed settings of the Venetian Theater, Spanish Courtyard, Music Room of the Rosen House, and the magnificent gardens.  With its unique heritage, Caramoor remains a place where magical summer days and nights are shared and enjoyed by thousands. "Caramoor is the loveliest Festival of them all." - The New York Times

Concert Venues, Art and Gardens
Concerts take place in two outdoor theaters: the 1714-seat, acoustically superb Venetian Theater and the more intimate, romantic Spanish Courtyard.  Caramoor is more than just music – there is beauty at every turn.  The Rosen House contains a vast collection of Renaissance, 18th-century, and Eastern art objects, including furniture, tapestries, sculpture, paintings, textiles, porcelain, and jade in twenty rooms that are open to the public.  There are entire rooms that were imported from European palaces and villas.  In fact, Caramoor is one of just five mansions in the country that incorporate entire rooms from historic Europe into its collection.  On Thursdays and Fridays, afternoon tea is served in the Summer Dining Room, overlooking the charming Spanish Courtyard.

Caramoor's gardens are also well worth the visit and include nine unique perennial gardens.  Among them are a Sense Circle for the visually handicapped, a Butterfly Garden, Tapestry Hedge, and Sunken Garden, which may be enjoyed on one's own or seen on a guided tour.

Enjoy a Picnic at Caramoor
Extend your Caramoor experience by arriving for concerts early and enjoying a picnic amidst the beautiful gardens.  Bring your own picnic or pre-order from Great Performances® by calling 212.337.6055.

Rosen House
Guided tours of the historic Rosen House at Caramoor are provided from Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00pm-4:00pm with the last tour at 3:00pm.  On Saturdays, during the Festival, tours are given from 1:00pm-5:00pm, with the last tour at 4:00pm.  Tickets are $10 (children 16 and under free).

GETTING TO CARAMOOR
Caramoor is easy to get to by car and mass transportation.  The Caramoor Caravan is available for Bel Canto at Caramoor performances.

By car from the West Side of Manhattan and New Jersey, take the Saw Mill River Parkway north to Katonah.  Exit at Route 35/Cross River.  Turn right and, at the first traffic light, make a right turn onto Route 22 south. Travel 1.9 miles to the junction of Girdle Ridge Road. Follow the signs to Caramoor.  (For detailed directions call 914.232.5035 and press 2, or online at www.caramoor.org).  Parking at Caramoor is free.

By train, take the Harlem Division of the Metro-North Railroad to Katonah, New York. Taxi service from the station to Caramoor (5 minutes away) is available.

From Manhattan, take the Caramoor Caravan to Bel Canto at Caramoor opera performances on July 18, and 31, and ride comfortably in a luxurious, air-conditioned coach.  For information and reservations call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252.

TICKETS
Tickets may be ordered by calling the Box Office at 914.232.1252 or online at www.caramoor.org. 
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

CREDITS          
Performances are made possible, in part, by Arts Westchester, with funds from Westchester County Government
Performances are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
 
ALL PROGRAMS AND ARTISTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

# # #

Press Tickets:
Laura Malick
917.339.7183
lmalick@cohndutcher.com

2009 CARAMOOR INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR
_______________________________________________________________________________________

July 18   Saturday 8:00 p.m. Venetian Theater 
L'elisir d'amore  by Gaetano Donizetti
critical edition by Alberto Zedda
Nemorino:       Lawrence Brownlee, tenor
Adina:             Georgia Jarman, soprano
Belcore:          Markus Beam, baritone
Dulcamara:     Marco Nistico, baritone
Caramoor Opera Chorus
Orchestra of St. Luke's
Will Crutchfield, conductor
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

July 31  Friday, 8:00 p.m.  Venetian Theater 
Semiramide  by Gioachino Rossini
critical edition by Philip Gossett
Semiramide:      Angela Meade, soprano
Arsace:             Vivica Genaux, mezzo-soprano
Idreno:               Lawrence Brownlee, tenor
Assur:               Daniel Mobbs, bass-baritone
Oroe:                 Christopher Dickerson, bass
Caramoor Opera Chorus
Orchestra of St. Luke's
Will Crutchfield, conductor
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tickets
Tickets may be ordered by calling the Box Office at 914.232.1252 or online at www.caramoor.org.

Caramoor is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

# # # # #

ALL PROGRAMS AND ARTISTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Press Tickets:
Laura Malick
917.339.7183
lmalick@cohndutcher.com