Friday, April 03, 2009

Meet the Cast of Suor Angelica and Cavalleria Rusticana!

Douglas Kinney Frost (Conductor) is Music Director of Syracuse Opera He has lead orchestras throughout North and South America receiving critical acclaim in recent performances including Porgy and Bess at the prestigious Teatro Colon, La Bohème at the Florida Grand Opera, a new production of Madama Butterfly and La Traviata with Anchorage Opera, the Boston premiere of Little Women at the New England Conservatory, The Magic Flute at the Syracuse Opera, and Postcard from Morocco at the University of Michigan. He was the associate conductor and chorus master for Opera Colorado’s Nixon in China, which was recently released on the Naxos recording label. In concert, the breadth of his repertoire has been highlighted in performances with the National Symphony of Mexico, the Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and orchestras in Brazil and Uruguay, Russian Federal Orchestra in Moscow, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra, Kharkov Philharmonia in Ukraine, and the National Orchestra of Korea in Seoul, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, and in the U.S. with the Colorado Bach Festival, Rochester Philharmonic, Westminster College, Utah, Virginia and Richmond Symphonies, among others.






Stephanie Gregory (soprano), Suor Angelica, debuts in this title role with Mississippi Opera. A native of Mississippi, Ms. Gregory made her debut as Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine with the Orchestra Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. Ms. Gregory has just completed the role of Tosca with Opera Theater of Connecticut. She sang her first Mimi in La Bohème with Opera Ischia, a role she later reprised with Mississippi Opera., and was also featured in the roles of Micaëla in Missouri and South Carolina as well as Musetta with the Opera Theater of Connecticut and Violetta in South Carolina and with the New Opera Festival di Roma, in Rome Italy. In 2004, she completed a concert tour of South America with the Yale Alumni Chorus singing the soprano soloist in Rossini’s Stabat Mater. She made her debut in the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires with the Orquesta Filarmônica de Buenos Aires. Other cities included were Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Santiago, Chile and La Plata, Argentina. Other operatic roles for the 2001 ‘American Jenny Lind’ include Lucia in The Rape of Lucretia, Nannetta in Falstaff, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, Ilia in Idomeneo and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Opera engagements in 2008/2009 include Violetta in La Traviata in South Carolina as well as reprising the title role of Suor Angelica for Opera Theater of Connecticut.
Her solo work includes Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem and ‘Great’ Mass in C Minor, Samuel Adler’s Stars in the Dust, and Haydn’s Creation and Lord Nelson Mass. Her first recording endeavor, Stars In The Dust, music by Meira Warsheaur, which was recorded by the Slovak Radio Orchestra in Bratislava was recently released by Albany Records. Ms. Gregory received a Master of Music degree in Opera Performance as well as an Artist’s Diploma from Yale University. She also graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor of Music Education degree, specializing in piano and choral conducting.


Jeniece Golbourne (mezzo-soprano), La Principessa/Santuzza, returns to Mississippi Opera where she was Mistress Page in Falstaff. She has performed as Maddalena in Rigoletto with New Jersey Opera; the title role in Carmen, Béatrice in Béatrice et Bénédict, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, and Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte at the Manhattan School of Music; Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Westminster Opera Theater; the Principessa in Suor Angelica with the American Singers Opera Project; and both Adalgisa in excerpts from Norman and Eboli in excerpts from Don Carlo with Opera Noire. Concert highlights have included Amneris in Aïda with the Annapolis Chorale and Symphony; arias from Carmen with the Deutsche Kammeracademie Neuss am Rhein Orchestra; the Verdi Requiem with the Würzburg Orchestra; da Falla’s El Sombrero de Tres Picos with the Manhattan School of Music Orchestra; an Opera Concert with the Prague Castle Guard and Police Orchestra, Czech Republic; and an American Songs Concert with the Collegiate Chorale and the New York Repertory Orchestra, conducted by Robert Bass. Jeniece Golbourne is a graduate of Westminster Choir College, and received her Master of Music in Voice Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. She has performed in the master classes of Fedora Barbieri, Marilyn Horne, Alberto Zedda, Martin Katz, Willie Waters, and Bo Skovhus.
Engagements for Ms. Golbourne during the 2008-09 season include Azucena in Il Trovatore with Virginia Opera and with Eugene Opera.


Marcos Aguiar (tenor), Turiddu, sang his first Otello in 2008 with the DuPage Opera Theater and with the Vero Beach Opera. He also appeared as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West with the Di Capo Opera Theater, Canio in I Pagliacci with the Augusta Opera, and during the summer he sang the role of Des Grieux in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut with the Utah Festival Opera in Logan, Utah.
A frequent performer in concert and opera, Marcos has appeared as a soloist with the State of São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestras of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo and Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, the Louisiana Philharmonic, among others. In 2003, as a winner of the 6th Aldo Baldin Vocal Competition in Brazil, he was awarded his prize by principal judge, Fiorenza Cossotto. In the same year he debuted as Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Opera Festival in Florianopolis, Brazil. In 2004, he sang concert versions of the roles of Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Don José in Carmen at The Municipal Theater of São Paulo and also sang the role of Don José at the Teatro da Paz Opera Festival in Belém, Brazil. In 2005, Marcos made his debut at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro singing the role of Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth. He appeared again in Carmen and Madama Butterfly at the 2006 and 2007 Indiana University Opera Theater seasons, again singing the roles of Don José and Pinkerton. Marcos Aguiar holds a Bachelors degree in Music and Voice from Santa Marcelina College in São Paulo, Brazil, and a Masters Degree in Music from Loyola University in New Orleans.

Maksìm Ivanov (baritone), Alfio, was born in Russia and has been praised for his portrayal of many operatic roles including Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Marcello and Schaunard in La Bohème, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Dandini in La Cenerentola, Onegin in Eugene Onegin, Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Robert in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, and Ford in Falstaff. In the United States he has sung leading roles with such companies as Glimmerglass Opera, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Opera Providence, Opera Theater of Connecticut, Boheme Opera of New Jersey, Sanibel Music Festival and Ash-Lawn Highland Festival among others. A frequent soloist on the concert stage, his most recent performances include Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at Woolsey Hall in New Haven, “Viva Italia: An Evening of Italian Arias” with the Wallingford Symphony and was a special guest soloist in an evening of Russian repertoire with the Connecticut Grand Opera and Orchestra.
Mr. Ivanov is a two time winner of the Metropolitan Opera competition in Connecticut, and has won numerous other prizes including the Connecticut Opera Guild Competition, the New York’s Jensen Foundation, Liederkranz Opera, the Licia Albanese Voice Competitions and the Shubert Theater International Opera Competition.
Mr. Ivanov holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his Bachelor of Music (cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Music degree from both the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University.
Currently Mr. Ivanov is an Adjunct Professor of Music at the Connecticut College in New London, CT.

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