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

2008 CARAMOOR INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

12th SEASON OF BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR

Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia
New Baerenreiter Critical Edition
Bruno Taddia, Priti Gandhi, Barry Banks,
Ricardo Herrera, Daniel Mobbs, Alina Peretyatko

Verdi's La Forza del Destino
Original St. Petersburg Version
Takesha Kizart, Emmanuel di Villarosa, Zurab Ninua,
Kirstin Chavez, Daniel Borowski, Marco Nistico,

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

Katonah, NY - The twelfth Bel Canto at Caramoor season - an annual operatic exploration that Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times calls "an essential contribution" - has been announced.  Will Crutchfield, Caramoor's Director of Opera, will present two classics: Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Verdi's La Forza del Destino, the latter in its rarely-heard original version, composed for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg at the height of Verdi's career.  Both operas will be heard in new critical editions supervised by Philip Gossett, who will also be on hand at Caramoor to assist in their preparation and give public lectures introducing them.  These editions are being heard at Caramoor for the first time in the New York area, in the case of Il Barbiere, and for the first time in America in the case of La Forza.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be given two semi-staged performances: Saturday, July 12 at 8:00 p.m. and Friday, July 18 at 8:00 p.m.  La Forza del Destino will be heard in concert form on Saturday, July 26 at 8:00 p.m.  Both operas will be sung in Italian with English super titles and will be performed in Caramoor's acoustically superb Venetian Theater.  Will Crutchfield will conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke's.

DEBUTS AND RETURNS

The cast for Il Barbiere includes a returning star tenor, Barry Banks, whose immaculate Bel Canto singing and vivid delivery won plaudits in I Puritani in 2006 and in Linda di Chamounix in 2007.  Alongside him will be the Figaro of Bruno Taddia, a fast-rising Italian star of Bel Canto whose recent successes include a stellar Sergeant Belcore in Palm Beach, and Indian-American mezzo-soprano Priti Ghandi, whom Crutchfield calls "an absolute jewel of a discovery," both in their Caramoor debuts.  Returning artists Ricardo Herrera (last summer's hilarious Marchese in Linda) and Daniel Mobbs (in his tenth Caramoor role, and fresh from Warsaw appearances as Rossini's William Tell) will portray Don Bartolo and Don Basilio, respectively.  Ukranian soprano Alina Peretyatko debuts as Berta. 

Five principal artists make their Caramoor debuts in La Forza.  Soprano Takesha Meshé Kizart, winner of Parma's prestigious "Verdi Voices" competition in 2006 and fresh from a triumph as Tosca in her Dallas Opera debut, sings Leonora.  Emmanuel di Villarosa, noted for his performances of the usual version of the opera in German theaters and currently performing a run of Lucia di Lammermoor with Will Crutchfield in Warsaw, takes on the challenge of Don Alvaro in the more extensive role Verdi originally composed for the tenor voice.  Zurab Ninua, a 2007 alumnus of  the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists program (and since then engaged by the Metropolitan Opera to cover a leading role in War and Peace) sings Don Carlo.  Mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chavez, noted for her interpretation of Carmen around the world, gives her first performance of another gypsy girl, Preziosilla.  Finally, Polish basso Daniel Borowski sings the Padre Guardiano. 

The sixth principal role, one of Verdi's most original creations, is the cynical friar Melitone, sung by returning Neapolitan baritone Marco Nistico.  Crutchfield notes, "Verdi made his own unique distillation of opera buffa in this part, and you can hear echoes of Barbiere all the way through it."  He had a particular artist in mind:  Achille de Bassini who, almost twenty years earlier, had created the tragic Doge of Venice in I Due Foscari and in whom Verdi saw an unsuspected comic talent.  "I am especially glad to welcome Marco Nistico back for Melitone," said Crutchfield, "not only because his sense of humor will find its way onto our stage for the first time, but also because he has just had a big success in De Bassini's other great role, Francesco Foscari, with Sarasota Opera."  
 
A DIVO AMONG SCHOLARS

A special feature of the 2008 season will be the extensive participation of Philip Gossett, the world's most renowned scholar of Italian opera and the General Editor of the ongoing critical editions of both Rossini's and Verdi's works.  He will join the team of instructors for the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists, participate in both programming and presentation of pre-opera recitals, and give several public lectures over the course of the season.  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 recent $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of his operatic work.  Besides supervising the two massive critical editions, he is the volume editor for many individual operas (including La Forza) 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 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 in a sustained way this year and to have his direct help in preparing performances based on the meticulous editions he has supervised."

THE OPERAS

Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be the fourth Rossini work presented by Bel Canto at Caramoor and Forza the fourth Verdi.  The two maestri were last paired in 2001, when each composer's version of Otello was given.  The Bel Canto program was inaugurated in 1997 with Rossini's Donna del Lago and presented his La Gazza Ladra in 1999; Verdi, meanwhile, has been featured in path-breaking period-style reinterpretations of La Traviata and Il Trovatore in 2005 and 2007.
 
Rossini's most beloved work, which Verdi himself called "the greatest comic opera ever written," will be heard in the long-awaited new edition supervised by Professor Gossett - the first to appear since the transfer of his Rossinian activities to the German publishing house of Baerenreiter (home of the critical editions of Handel and Mozart).  Like Caramoor's recent revivals of La Sonnambula, La Traviata, and others, it promises to be a completely fresh take on a well-known masterpiece.

Based on the immortal Beaumarchais comedy of the same name, The Barber of Seville is an evergreen, rich in comic characters and situations that never fail in their freshness.  In Crutchfield's view, however, it is ripe for a thorough musical re-examination, for which the new edition provides a perfect occasion.  "Barbiere is the earliest Italian opera to stay in the repertory permanently,"  the conductor explains.  "So it went through more transformations than most.  The way we usually hear it, even in today's period of historical awareness, owes a lot to the way later scores by Donizetti, Verdi and even Puccini influenced its interpreters.  If we try to peel back these layers of tradition and speculate on what Rossini's public might have heard, we come up with something much closer to Mozart.  If he had lived, Mozart would have turned sixty while Rossini was composing Il Barbiere, and would probably have been writing his 25th opera for the same singers Rossini knew."

Of course, both Mozart's and Rossini's publics would have heard virtuosity and improvisation from the singers, in another Italian tradition that was largely lost in subsequent generations.  A celebrated focus of Bel Canto at Caramoor has been the renewal of this tradition, whether in Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini or even the young Verdi, whose operas still embraced it.  In Caramoor's Barbiere, a special feature will be the inclusion of authentic variations from Rossini himself and his contemporaries, from an appendix to the critical edition that Baerenreiter and Professor Gossett have invited Crutchfield himself to prepare. 

Will Crutchfield explained, "Because this opera was such a commercial hit, people bothered to write down quite a lot of the improvisations used by its early interpreters, all the way back to the tenor of the world premiere.  So we can compare what they did to what was done later and form a really precise idea of the style.  And some of it will bring surprises.  Most of these versions have never been available in any form that singers today could find and study, so it's very exciting that Baerenreiter has decided to present them to the modern world alongside the new edition of the opera itself." 

The Caramoor cast will not necessarily reproduce one literal version of the old variations, he added, but rather, mix and match them according to the voices of the singers, and use them as guidelines for other parts of the opera that have not come down to us in period versions.  "It will be very, very different from any Barbiere anyone has heard before and I expect it will be a lot of fun," he said.  "There are not many operas so perfectly designed for fun as this one, and that applies to the drama and the music equally."

For the second title of 2008, Caramoor turns to an exciting rarity.  La Forza del Destino, the widest-ranging and most ambitious opera Verdi had yet composed, was first performed in 1862 in St. Petersburg under the compose's supervision.  Seven years later, dissatisfied with its progress through the world's theaters, he made several radical revisions and re-launched the opera at Milan's La Scala.  Even then, La Forza did not join Verdi's hit parade.  That had to wait for the 20th century, when a renewed appreciation of the great Italian master brought many of his lesser-known and more difficult works into the standard repertory.  The opera is now a classic, with a rich performance history in New York and elsewhere, but few opera-goers have had the chance to learn that both versions of La Forza del Destino are magnificent operas.  Professor Gossett's recent research, meanwhile, has opened still further windows on this score.  Materials preserved, but long unexamined, in St. Petersburg give us "more documentation of Verdi's creative process than we have for any other opera," according to Gossett. 

The biggest single difference between the familiar Forza and the original concerns the denouement.  The opera is based on a celebrated play by the Duke of Rivas, who also wrote the source-play for Il Trovatore, and, in his first version of the opera, Verdi followed Rivas in allowing the titular "Force of Destiny" to reach its inexorable conclusion with the deaths of all three of the protagonists that Destiny has doomed as its victims.

In 1869, Verdi softened the ending, allowing the tenor to survive and ending the opera on a note of religious consolation.   The final trio he added to the score is a glorious piece of music, and so the revised version of La Forza will always need to be performed, but at the same time, many people have felt that it is a sprawling opera, and that it lacks the taut cohesion we know in other Verdi works.  Crutchfield, explaining the choice of the original version, suggested that "this aspect, the sense of through-line and inevitability, may be stronger in the St. Petersburg score."  There, the dying heroine makes the opera's theme explicit:  Vedi destino: io moro (Behold Fate:  I am dying).   Don Alvaro, whose love for Leonora has unwittingly brought about the destruction of her entire family, completes the circle:  declaring himself an emissary of the damned, he throws himself from a cliff, and the opera ends with the cathartic bleakness that Verdi knew so well how to portray. 

The St. Petersburg Forza holds other surprises as well:  a major tenor aria that Verdi removed (perhaps because of its extreme difficulty), a different song for the gypsy Preziosilla, and several smaller passages throughout the score.  "Verdi," said Crutchfield, "is on the very short list of composers whose every mature page is worth hearing.  The first Forza finds him closer to the world of Ballo, Simon Boccanegra and Traviata; the familiar version finds him closer to the world of Don Carlos and Aida.  And since both of those are wonderful worlds, it is extremely rewarding to hear how he imagined La Forza del Destino when it was new."

SPECIAL PRE-OPERA EVENTS FOR TICKET-HOLDERS

One revelation of Philip Gossett's Russian research will be highlighted in Caramoor's popular series of pre-opera lectures and recitals.  It turns out that Verdi prepared not two versions of La Forza, but three.  It had long been known that he went to St. Petersburg in 1861 and began rehearsals there, only to be forced to abandon them and return the following year when the prima donna took ill and no acceptable substitute could be brought to the remote Russian capital in time.  What was not known before is that the complete 1861 score can be reconstructed from rehearsal materials preserved in the theater?s archives and that it contains still further music, unknown even from the published 1862 version.  Professor Gossett will present excerpts from this "pre-first" Forza, sung by members of the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists ensemble, and explain the history of the opera?s gestation, the adventure of its reconstruction, and the insights it provides into Verdi?s maturing genius in an afternoon lecture-recital. 

Other afternoon events (listed in full below) include:  a recital of music written by and for the Garcia family (Manuel Garcia Sr. was the original Almaviva in Barbiere and his traveling company introduced the opera to the United States nine years later); a recital of Russian operatic music in Italian style and Italian music written for Russia, illustrating the tradition into which La Forza del Destino fit;; and a discussion of "Edition and Tradition," exploring the fascinating history of Barbiere from its own day to ours.  In addition, Philip Gossett will give introductory lectures just before the performances of July 12 and 26, and Will Crutchfield will introduce Barbiere to the July 18 audience, with alternate arias for Rosina and Doctor Bartolo. Participating in all these presentations will be the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists, accompanied by chief coach and assistant conductor Rachelle Jonck.  

Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Saturday, July 12

3:30 p.m. Edition and Tradition

Il Barbiere di Siviglia has the distinction of being the oldest opera from the Italian repertory that has continuously remained in that repertory.  That means it also has the longest accumulated set of performing traditions.  Philip Gossett and Will Crutchfield discuss the transformations Il Barbiere has undergone in its nearly two centuries of existence and the differences a new edition can make.  Members of the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists illustrate with alternative arias and versions from Rossini's pen.
 
4:30 p.m.  The Great Garcias
 
The star of the first Barbiere was its tenor, Manuel Garcia (the opera was actually called Almaviva on its opening night).  His son, Manuel Jr., was America's first Figaro (and the inventor of the laryngoscope).  His daughters, Maria and Paolina (Pauline), became celebrated prima donnas under their married names of Malibran and Viardot, and both of them kept Rosina as a star part.  And they composed too!  The Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists with Rachelle Jonck perform a program of music written by and for this extraordinary family.
 
5:30 p.m.  Dinner Break

7:00 p.m.  Pre-Opera Lecture - Philip Gossett introduces Il Barbiere di Siviglia
 

Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Friday, July 18

7:00 p.m.  Pre-Opera Event

Will Crutchfield introduces Il Barbiere di Siviglia, with alternate arias for Rosina and Don Bartolo sung by members of the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists.

Verdi's La Forza del Destino -  Saturday, July 26

3:30 p.m.  Verdi's Workshop
 
La Forza del Destino is perhaps Verdi's most ambitious opera and it is also the one for which we have the most documentation of his compositional process.  The world knows two versions (St. Petersburg 1862, performed at Caramoor, and Milan 1869, the familiar score), but in fact there is an earlier one still, prepared by Verdi in 1861 before a singer?s illness forced a year's postponement of the premiere, and reconstructed only in the 21st century.  Philip Gossett takes the audience on a journey through Verdi's encounters with the Force of Destiny, with fascinating music "from the cutting-room floor" performed by the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists.
 
4:30 p.m.  The Force of Destiny and the Destiny of Russian Opera
 
Verdi was not the first major Italian composer to write for St. Petersburg but rather the last.  His intervention came at a moment of ferment and radical progress for Russian opera; more than one observer has noted that without La Forza, Boris Godunov would have been impossible.  This recital by the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists with Rachelle Jonck weaves together earlier Italian music for the Russian capital with the developing responses of native composers.

5:30 p.m.  Dinner Break

7:00 p.m.  Philip Gossett introduces La Forza del Destino

About BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR

The Bel Canto at Caramoor program 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 chief critic Anthony Tommasini 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 his review of the opening.  Writing in  The Wall Street Journal in 1997, Heidi Waleson reported "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."  Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times added his praise following 1999's 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, three 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 theater, ranging from a cycle of the Mozart and 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 - Maria Zifchak, Indra Thomas, Frank Porretta, Kate Aldrich, Daniel Mobbs, Kenneth Tarver, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Krisztina Szabo, Yeghishe Manucharyan, John Osborn and Alexandra Deshorties.  Established artists like Ewa Podles, 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.  Mr. Tommasini in the Times has called the series "essential," and eleven seasons 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 the great house 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 entertain friends from around the world.  Their musical evenings were the seeds of today's 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 -  the Rosens established a Foundation to open Caramoor to the public in perpetuity.

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 a Garden of Great Music. "We invite people to come early, explore our beautiful grounds, take a tour of the House Museum, visit our gift shop, enjoy a pre-concert picnic, and discover beautiful music in a relaxed setting," advises Paul Rosenblum, Caramoor"s Managing Director. 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

Art and Gardens
Concerts take place in two outdoor theaters: the large, acoustically superb Venetian Theater and the more intimate, romantic Spanish Courtyard.  Caramoor is more than just music -  there is beauty at every turn.  The House Museum, the former summer home of Caramoor's founders, Lucie and Walter Rosen, 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 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 Iris and Peony 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.

House Museum
Guided tours of the House Museum are provided from Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00 pm-4:00 pm with the last tour at 3 pm.  On Saturdays, during the Festival, tours are given from 1:00 pm-5:00 pm, with the last tour at 4:00 pm.  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 12, 18, and 26, and ride comfortably in a luxurious, air-conditioned coach.  Round trip service is $25.  Call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252 or www.caramoor.org for schedule details or to order tickets.

CREDITS

Performances are made possible, in part, by Westchester Arts Council, 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.
 
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.

ALL PROGRAMS AND ARTISTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

# # #

Press Tickets:
Laura Malick
917.339.7183
lmalick@cohndutcher.com

Bel Canto at Caramoor

July 12 & July 18                            Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Saturday & Friday                          by Gioachino Rossini
8:00 p.m.                                        a new critical edition by Philip Gossett
Venetian Theater                           Bruno Taddia, baritone
                                                       Priti Gandhi, mezzo-soprano
                                                       Barry Banks, tenor
                                                       Ricardo Herrera, bass-baritone
                                                       Daniel Mobbs, bass-baritone
                                                       Alina Peretyatko, soprano
                                                       Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists
                                                       Orchestra of St. Luke's
                                                       Will Crutchfield, conductor

July 26                                            La Forza del Destino
Saturday, 8:00 p.m.                        by Giuseppe Verdi
Venetian Theater                           original St. Petersburg version
a new critical edition                      by Philip Gossett
                                                       Takesha Meshé Kizart, soprano
                                                       Emmanuel di Villarosa, tenor
                                                       Zurab Ninua, baritone
                                                       Kristin Chavez, mezzo-soprano
                                                       Daniel Borowski, bass
                                                       Marco Nistico, baritone
                                                       Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists
                                                       Orchestra of St. Luke's
                                                       Will Crutchfield, conductor

Press Tickets:          
Laura Malick
917.339.7183
lmalick@cohndutcher.com