Susan Graham to perform at Gala Bel Canto
March 10, 2017
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus is proud to honor Plácido Domingo and Jo Bufalino Libaw and Shawn D. Libaw at Gala Bel Canto on March 24, 2017. This year’s event will feature special performances by world-renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham.
Susan Graham – hailed as “an artist to treasure” by the New York Times – rose to the highest echelon of international performers within just a few years of her professional debut, mastering an astonishing range of repertoire along the way. Her operatic roles range from Monteverdi’s Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which was written especially for her. A familiar face at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, she also maintains a strong international presence at such key venues as Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet, the Sydney Opera House, and the Hollywood Bowl. Composers from Purcell to Sondheim are represented on her most recent Onyx album, Virgins, Vixens & Viragos, and her 2004 collection of Ives songs won a Grammy Award.
To launch the 2016-17 season, Graham joined Renée Fleming and Michael Tilson Thomas at the San Francisco Symphony’s opening-night gala, before stepping into play Dido in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new, premiere staging of Berlioz’s epic Les Troyens. Having created the role of Sister Helen Prejean in the world premiere production of Dead Man Walking, she makes her role debut as the convict’s mother in Washington National Opera’s revival of the work. She returns to Santa Fe Opera as Prince Orlofsky in the company’s first new production of Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus in 25 years, and sings Erika in Samuel Barber’s Vanessa with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. She sang Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony at Spain’s majestic Catedral de Toledo with the Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Real, and joins the MET Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen at Carnegie Hall for selections from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn; sings Octavian in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier with the Boston Symphony and Andris Nelsons; performs songs from Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; reprises Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopâtre with the San Antonio Symphony; and sings Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with the Sydney Symphony under David Robertson. In recital, she joins regular partner Malcolm Martineau for accounts of “Frauenliebe und -leben Variations,” her wide-ranging program inspired by Schumann’s iconic song cycle, in Santa Barbara, Baltimore, and Portland, Oregon.
Graham’s earliest operatic successes were in such trouser roles as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Her technical expertise soon brought mastery of Mozart’s more virtuosic roles, like Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Idamante in Idomeneo and Cecilio in Lucio Silla, as well as the title roles of Handel’s Ariodante and Xerxes. She went on to triumph in two iconic Richard Strauss mezzo roles, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier and the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos.
Come see Susan Graham at Gala Bel Canto!