About this Artist
The dazzling, vocally distinctive, theatrically engaging mezzo-soprano VIVICA GENAUX, one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Baroque and bel canto music, continues to garner kudos for her compelling performances on the world’s great musical stages, not only for her extraordinary technique and the beauty of her voice, but also for her vibrant character portrayals. Genaux balances her appearances in the United States and abroad with operatic engagements, concerts, and recitals in new venues and countries, as well as returns to sites of previous audience and critical triumphs.
This season there is a particular emphasis on the music of Antonio Vivaldi. She adds three characters from rarely heard works to her repertoire, two by Vivaldi (Gilade in Il Farnace and Epitide in L’oracolo in Messenia), and one by J.C. Bach (Tamasse in Zanaïda), bringing her total to 46 roles, 29 of which are en travesti. She performs concerts with a host of the leading period instrument ensembles and her discography is augmented with a Baroque program and Vivaldi’s L’oracolo for Virgin Classics.
Her 2011/12 season commences at the Musikfest Bremen with a Hasse/Handel concert, to be recorded by Sony, in her first collaboration with Cappella Gabetta. Locarno, as part of Le Settimane Musicali, is the first stop for concert presentations of Vivaldi’s Il Farnace with Diego Fasolis leading I Barocchisti in Bremen and Ambronay as well as for her company debut at the Opéra de Lausanne. Interspersed among these are her role debut as Tamasse in a concert performance of the recently-rediscovered Zanaïda at Paris’ Cité de la Musique, marking her premiere pairing with Opera Fuoco, led by David Stern; she has a quartet of dates as Isabella for her first engagement in Oviedo, Spain; concerts at San Francisco’s Herbst Theater and elsewhere in the Bay-area for a new collaboration with Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; she is a guest artist for the German AIDS Foundation’s benefit concert on the stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin; and is then introduced to audiences at Prague’s Strings of Autumn Festival.
The Alaskan-born artist begins 2012 in the company of one of her most frequent musical partners, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante. They perform another Vivaldi rarity in concert, with Genaux taking on the role in Epitide in L’oracolo in Messenia, initially in Caen, France, and then at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, where it will be recorded for Virgin Classics. These same musical forces then embark on a six-city U.S. tour presenting Vivaldi arias as featured in Pyrotechnics, their 2009 Grammy-nominated Virgin Classics recording, at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Las Vegas, Tucson, Denver, at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, and ending in Kansas City. She makes her debut in Luxembourg at their Philharmonie in a program of 18th- and 19th-century repertoire. The Farnace team reassembles in Strasbourg and Mulhouse for a fully staged production at France’s Opéra National du Rhin. In between the runs, the artists journey to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw for a concert presentation. To conclude the season she makes her International Gluck Opera Festival debut in Nuremberg featuring opera arias by Gluck and his near-contemporaries, W.A. Mozart and the Czech composer Josef [CZECH SYMBOL] Myslivec?ek.
Viveca Genaux’s discography/videography continues to grow steadily. The two previously mentioned recordings to be made in 2011/12 are set for release the following season, with two others to follow. Recent releases include: the 2010 Oehms Classics CD of Hasse’s Sanctus Petrus et Sancta Maria Magdalena, led by Michael Hofstetter from the 2008 Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiel; a DVD of Vienna’s production of Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt on the Unitel Classica/C Major label (2010); and the Virgin Classics CD of Vivaldi’s Ercole sul Termodonte (2010/11), conducted by Fabio Biondi leading Europa Galante.