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

BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR

Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia
The New  York Premiere of the New Baerenreiter Critical Edition
Daniel Mobbs, Priti Gandhi, Barry Banks,
Ricardo Herrera, Matthew Treviño, Eve Miedel

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

Saturday, July 12 and Friday, July 18 at 8:00pm

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" - begins with Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia in a new critical edition supervised by Philip Gossett, and heard for the first time in the New York area.  Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be given two semi-staged performances with the Orchestra of St. Luke's led by Caramoor Director of Opera, Will Crutchfield.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be sung in Italian with English super titles and will be performed in Caramoor's acoustically superb Venetian Theater.  Mr. Gossett will be on hand at Caramoor to assist in the opera?s preparation and give public lectures introducing it. 

Bel Canto at Caramoor will continue on Saturday, July 26 at 8:00pm with a concert performance of Verdi's La Forza del Destino in its rarely-heard original version, composed for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg at the height of Verdi's career.  This will be the first time the original version has been sung in America.

There will be afternoon and evening lectures and recitals for ticketholders prior to the Saturday performances of both operas.  A pre-opera lecture will be held prior to the Friday evening performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

TICKETS AND THE CARAMOOR CARAVAN

Tickets for the Saturday, July 12 performance are $20.00, $35.00, $50.00, $65.00 and $80.00 and for the Friday, July 18 performance are $17.50, $30.00, $42.50, $55.00 and $67.50.  They may be ordered by calling the Box Office at 914.232.1252 or online at www.caramoor.org.

The Caramoor Caravan, a luxurious, air-conditioned coach, is available to bring audience members from Manhattan to Bel Canto at Caramoor opera performances.  Round trip service is $25.00.  Call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252 or www.caramoor.org for schedule details or to order tickets.

Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

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 Daniel Mobbs, marking his fifth Rossini role with Will Crutchfield, and Indian-American mezzo-soprano Priti Ghandi, whom Crutchfield calls "an absolute jewel of a discovery," both in their Caramoor debuts.  Returning artist Ricardo Herrera (last summer's hilarious Marchese in Linda) will portray Don Bartolo.  Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists Matthew Treviño, bass-baritone, and Eve Miedel, soprano, will be Don Basilio and Berta. 

IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA

Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be the fourth Rossini work presented by Bel Canto at Caramoor.  The Bel Canto program was inaugurated in 1997 with Rossini's Donna del Lago.  La Gazza Ladra followed in 1999 and Otello was presented in 2001.
 
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."

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."

SPECIAL PRE-OPERA EVENTS FOR TICKET-HOLDERS

During the afternoon and evening prior to the Saturday performance, ticket-holders can also enjoy a varied menu of lectures and recitals along with the chance to picnic in Caramoor's famous gardens.  A pre-opera lecture will be held prior to the Friday evening performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
 
                                                                               Saturday, July 12
 
3:30pm  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.
 
4:30pm  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 pianist Rachelle Jonck perform a program of music written by and for this extraordinary family.
 
5:30pm  Dinner Break

7:00pm  Pre-Opera Lecture - Philip Gossett introduces Il Barbiere di Siviglia
 

Friday, July 18

7:00pm  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.

A DIVO AMONG SCHOLARS

Philip Gossett is 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."

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 Podleś, 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 - in 1946 the Rosens gave Caramoor to the public.

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," encourages 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 an 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, 1:00pm-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 $10.00 (children 16 and under free).

GETTING TO CARAMOOR

Caramoor is easy to get to by car and mass transportation.  

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 (five 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 $25.00.  Call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252 or www.caramoor.org for schedule details or to order tickets.

Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

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CARAMOOR INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
Bel Canto at Caramoor

July 12 & July 18                       Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Saturday & Friday                     by Gioachino Rossini
8:00pm                                      a new critical edition by Philip Gossett
Venetian Theater                      Daniel Mobbs, baritone
                                                 Priti Gandhi, soprano
                                                 Barry Banks, tenor
                                                 Ricardo Herrera, bass-baritone
                                                 Matthew Treviño, bass-baritone
                                                 Eve Miedel, soprano
                                                 Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists
                                                 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 Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

ALL PROGRAMS AND ARTISTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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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.
 

Press Tickets:
Laura Malick
917.339.7183
lmalick@cohndutcher.com