Artosphere Festival Orchestra
Live from Crystal Bridges: Mozart in the Museum
PROGRAM:
W.A. Mozart, Symphony No. 11 in D major K. 84
- I. Allegro
- II. Andante
- III. Allegro
W.A. Mozart, Exsultate jubilate K.165/158a
Featuring Soprano Alexandra Nowakowski
- I. Allegro. Exsultate, jubilate.
- II. Recitative: Fulget amica dies
- III. Tu virginum corona
- IV. Alleluia. Allegro
Intermission
W.A. Mozart, Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183
- I. Allegro con brio
- II. Andante
- III. Menuetto e Trio IV. Allegro
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 7pm
LOCATION: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
TICKETS: $49
PLEASE NOTE: This event will be live streamed on YouTube. Click the button below to listen*
SOPRANO BIO:
Praised by Opera News for her “impassioned singing”, Polish American coloratura soprano Alexandra Nowakowski returns to The Metropolitan Opera for the 2022-23 season to cover Barbara/Mrs. Latch in The Hours (Puts), Voce dal cielo in Don Carlo, and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. She rejoins the Brooklyn Art Society to sing Shostakovich's Op. 79 and will present a solo recital at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona as a finalist in the El Primer Palau competition. She also joins the Embassy Series for a solo recital, Symphony in C, and Artosphere Festival Orchetra for Mozart's Exsultate jubilate, K. 165.
Alexandra joined the roster of The Metropolitan Opera for the 2021-22 season to cover Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor and Gilda in Rigoletto. She sang Shostakovich's Op. 127 with the Brooklyn Art Song Society, and as a recipient of the Beebe Fund fellowship spent several months in Poland to record her debut album of all Polish music, KRAINA.
Alexandra was scheduled to begin her 2020-21 season by joining the roster of The Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Olympia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (COVID19). She was also slated to be presented in multiple concert venues, including the Carnegie Hall Citywide Concert Series, a return to the Columbus Symphony for Haydn's Creation, and a debut with the National Symphony Orchestra for Mahler's Symphony No. 4 under Gianandrea Noseda. She made her debut in Poland in a New Year’s Eve gala with the Opera Bałtycka in Gdańsk, Poland. In the summer of 2021, Ms. Nowakowski returned to Wolf Trap Opera as Johanna in Sweeney Todd and La Fée in Viardot's Cendrillon. To finish off the 20/21 season she sang a solo recital for The Sembrich Museum.
In 2020, Ms. Nowakowski was scheduled to sing the role of Hilde Mack in Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers (COVID19) at Wolf Trap Opera where she made her debut in the summer of 2015 covering Susanna and performing Due Donne in Le nozze di Figaro. She was invited back in 2019 where she performed the role of Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos to critical acclaim, including that of the Washington Classical Review, stating that she “brought strength and sincerity” and “finessed the coloratura demands of the aria ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ with panache and airy nuance, as refreshing as a gin fizz.”
As a Cafritz Young Artist at the Washington National Opera for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, Ms. Nowakowski performed the roles of Papagena and the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute at the Kennedy Center, as well as the role of Anna Gomez in The Consul staged by Francesca Zambello with the Cafritz Young Artist Program. She performed Nannetta in scenes from Falstaff as well as Clorinda in scenes from La Cenerentola in concert with the WNO Orchestra under the baton of Joseph Colaneri on the Kennedy Center stage.
Ms. Nowakowski has had a string of recent solo orchestral debuts, including Mozart’s Requiem with the Columbus Symphony, a NYE Concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and as Gilda in a concert version of Rigoletto, broadcast on medici.tv with the Verbier Festival. No stranger to medici.tv, she was also broadcast live as a participant in Joyce DiDonato’s Masterclass at Carnegie Hall in 2019, as well as in 2018 as a semi-finalist for the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup. Additional recent solo performance credits include a solo recital at The Phillips Collection as the First Prize winner of the Vocal Arts DC Art Song Discovery Competition as well as her debut performance of Bach’s B minor Mass with the Bach Society Houston.
A highly successful competitor, Ms. Nowakowski was recently awarded First Prize in the Opera Columbus Cooper-Bing Competition, the Partners for the Arts Competition, the Marcella Sembrich International Voice Competition with the Kosciuszko Foundation, and is a winner of the 2019 Astral National Auditions. She is a First Prize winner of the Gerda Lissner Foundation Competition and the Violetta DuPont Competition. She won Second Prize in the James Toland Vocal Arts Competition, the Gerda Lissner Lieder/Song Competition, FAVA’s Grand Concours de Chant, and the Dorothy-Lincoln Smith Voice Competition. She has garnered other significant top awards from the Loren L. Zachary Society Vocal Competition and the Giulio Gari Foundation Competition and was a 2020 Second Place Winner from Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in the Middle Atlantic Region.
As a resident artist at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Ms. Nowakowski performed the roles of Zerbinetta and Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos, the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Gilda in Rigoletto, Sophie in Werther, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, and Musetta in La bohème. Other role highlights include Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel with the Philadelphia Sinfonia, and Dido in Dido and Aeneas with the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana.
Ms. Nowakowski holds an Artist Diploma from AVA and a Bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
MUSIC DIRECTOR BIO:
Corrado Rovaris is the Music Director of the Opera Philadelphia and Music Director of the Artosphere Festival Orchestra, founded in 2011 by the Walton Arts Center. Celebrated for his vibrant and expressive performances, especially in the bel canto and verismo repertoire, as well as his artistry in bringing new and contemporary works to life, Rovaris engages with his warm presence on the podium.
Maestro Rovaris opened Opera Philadelphia’s 2022/2023 season with Rossini’s Otello followed Verdi’s Falstaff at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Teatro Regio di Parma, and will finish the Opera Philadelphia season with Puccini’s La boheme before returning to lead the Artosphere Festival Orchestra in Northwest Arkansas. Rovaris’ 2023/2024 season will include Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ The Anonymous Lover, and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly with Opera Philadelphia, and Donizetti’s Alfredo il Grande at the Teatro Donizetti, in Bergamo Italy and Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Born in Bergamo, Italy, Corrado Rovaris graduated from the Conservatory of Milan with degrees in composition, organ, and harpsichord. From 1992 through 1996 he was the Assistant Chorus Master of the Teatro alla Scala and made his debut on the podium with Il filosofo di campagna by Galuppi in a production by Associazione Lirica e Concertistica Italiana. He was subsequently invited to conduct at the Teatro Comunale in Florence and at the Rossini Opera Festival. Soon after, he began appearing as a regular guest in many of the major Italian opera houses such as La Scala, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro La Fenice, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Internationally he has led productions for the Opéra de Lyon, Opera Monte Carlo, Théâtre Municipal de Lausanne, Oper Köln, Oper Frankfurt, the Garsington Opera Festival, and the Japan Opera Foundation in Tokyo, among others. In symphonic repertoire, he regularly conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Danish Radio Sinfonietta, the Orchestra de Theatre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), and Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi (Milan).
In 1999 Rovaris made his U.S. debut with Opera Philadelphia conducting Il Nozze di Figaro. His subsequent collaborations with the company led to his eventual appointment as Opera Philadelphia’s first ever music director in the 2004/05 season, a position he has served in since. Elsewhere in North America, maestro Rovaris has conducted Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereux at the Canadian Opera Company and has frequently led productions at the Santa Fe Opera including Simon Boccanegra, La bohème, L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, and Lucia di Lammermoor. Most recently, Maestro Rovaris returned to the Santa Fe Opera in summer 2018 to conduct L’italiana in Algeri. Other collaborators have included the St. Louis Opera and the Glimmerglass Opera. In October 2008 he conducted the Tucker Gala with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, featuring among other guest soloists Susan Graham and Bryn Terfel. He has established a close connection with the Curtis Institute of Music, and since 2009 has led several joint Curtis-Opera Philadelphia productions, including the 2018 production of Bernstein’s A Quiet Place.
Maestro Rovaris was awarded knighthood by the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2015 and was honored in 2016 with the Franco Abbiati Prize.
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