Young Opera Singers Join Together For AIDS Research Recording

Singers from left to right: Jamie Barton, Sean Panikkar, Susanna Phillips, and Keith Phares

"An all-star cast of renowned singers and instrumentalists comes together on one CD to sing for hope and in the cause of supporting AIDS research: Joyce DiDonato, Yo-Yo Ma, Jamie Barton, Noah Stewart, Susanna Phillips, Sean Panikkar, Matthew Polenzani, Anthony Dean Griffey, Monica Yunus, Camille Zamora, Isabel Leonard and many more. Actors Sharon Stone (Casino, Basic Instinct) and Ansel Elgort (The Fault In Our Stars) contribute readings of poetry. All profits from the sale of this album will go to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. This CD features new songs by established and emerging American composers, many specially commissioned to create a global musical portrait of AIDS today." [Source] Listen to excerpts from the recording by clicking here and click here to purchase. See the back inlay for the disc after the jump. Also be sure to check other original songbooks including Heartbeats and AIDS Quilt Songbook. 

Nicole Cabell Leads Master Class For OpTIC In Evanston

The latest recording from soprano Nicole Cabell
features songs composed by Ricky Ian
 Gordon. Click here to purchase the CD.

"Presbyterian Homes’ Westminster Place retirement community will host the Fourth Annual Young Artist Opera Workshop, a month-long opera training program for junior and senior college students, graduate students and young professionals. The workshop will take place from June 17 through July 12, 2013, and is produced by the Opera Training Institute of Chicago (OpTIC) located in Evanston, IL. Workshop classes will be held in the performance spaces at Westminster Place, where its residents are invited to attend. Classes include private voice and coaching lessons, master classes taught by guest artists, acting, aria presentation and audition technique. Additional courses will include yoga and the Alexander Technique of proper posture and stress elimination for optimal vocal delivery, and scenes performance in full costume with piano accompaniment. A special night of arias and songs in concert will take place in Elliott Chapel on the Westminster Place campus on Sunday, June 30, 2013. An opera scenes performance will be held in the same venue on Tuesday evening, July 9, 2013. Among the guest artists leading master classes is Soprano Nicole Cabell, 2005 winner of the BBC Singer of the World competition and Decca recording artist." [Source]

Palm Beach Opera to Make Major Seasonal Changes in 2013

Nicole Cabell as Juliette and Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Roméo star in Palm Beach Opera’s remarkable production of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Read the review of the performance by clicking here.
(Photo: Chris Salata/Daily News)

"Palm Beach Opera announced a planned 2013 season Friday night contingent upon closing a deficit and fund-raising that has yet to materialize. The company continues to struggle with an ongoing deficit and reduced contributions from patrons. Next season Palm Beach Opera will move to a festival business model, with a more concentrated season running three months from January through March at the Kravis Center, which they hope will reduce expenses. Further, the company will inaugurate an association with Lynn University and also offer a variety of opera performances throughout Palm Beach County. The season will open in January with Verdi’s La Traviata. Rossini’s La Cenerentola will follow in February with Richard Strauss’s Salome closing the season in March. Casting details are yet to be announced. The company will also mount a fully staged production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw featuring the company’s young artists at Lynn University’s Wold Performing Arts Center in Boca Raton. Other off-site festival events include a free outdoor concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen at the Meyer Amphitheater in West Palm Beach and a gala concert in Palm Beach. Details of the season were announced by company general director Daniel Biaggi at Friday’s opening-night performance of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette at the Kravis Center." [Source]

Happy Birthday: Nicole Cabell

"Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante"
Carmen (Bizet)

Nicole Cabell (born October 17, 1977), is an American opera singer. She is presently best known as the 2005 winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Cabell was born in Panorama City, California. Her grandfather, Luther Lanier, was the first African American Chief in the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles. She is of African American, Korean and Caucasian ancestry, and was brought up in the California beach town of Ventura. As a child, she did not listen to classical music, but she did play the flute in her junior high school band. She and a classmate used to play basketball together and would "imitate opera singers". Her mother encouraged her to join the school choir and she tried out for a school musical and was a success. At the age of 15, Cabell began to notice that "People obviously can hear something, even if I can't," she said. "That's sort of

“Quando m'en vo"
La Bohème (Puccini)

how it's been: I've been walking through doors as they've been presented to me". She had three years of private singing lessons in high school with soprano voice teacher Linda Brice (MM, Indiana University School of Music) and voice instructor and coach Vincent Sorisio (MM, California State University, Northridge; BM Indiana University School of Music.) It was with Sorisio that, at the age of 18 in 1997, she took 2nd prize in the NATS competition for the Western Region. Subsequently Sorisio continued to teach Miss Cabell; he prepared her for her auditions for various music schools and public performances. At Eastman Nicole studied with John Maloy. She then entered the Juilliard School, but only for a very brief time, as she had been asked to join the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists at the Lyric Opera of Chicago where she remained for three years. During this period

"Chi il bel sogno di Doretta"
La Rondine (Puccini)

of time the Center's then-director, Richard Pearlman, famous soprano and Director of Vocal Studies Gianna Rolandi, and opera legend Marilyn Horne were her mentors. Nicole Cabell continues to study with Rolandi, who is the present director of the newly renamed Ryan Opera Center. Nicole returned home to Ventura and performed for the Ventura Music Festival, which included a reunion with pianist Vincent Sorisio in a performance for her former school, Ventura High School in 2008. After winning the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competion in June 2005, Cabell made her London début on August 2, 2006 at The Proms, singing Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations, with Sir Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She made her Royal Opera House début at the Barbican as Princesse Eudoxie in a concert performance of Halévy's La Juive, on September

"Tandis qu'il sommeille...
Je l'ai revu" La Juive (Halévy)

19, 2006, conducted by Daniel Oren. She also sang the role of Adina in L'elisir d'amore in Montpellier. She was planning to make her debut at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in mid-December 2006, but due to the last-minute indisposition of soprano Angela Gheorghiu, Cabell was asked to step in, and her debut took place somewhat earlier - on 7 December - as Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette alongside Neil Shicoff. She had previously sung the role at the Spoleto Festival USA in May 2006. Cabell made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on December 22, 2008, singing the role of Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. In 2007, she gave her first solo recital at St John's Smith Square in London, sang the title role in Donizetti's Imelda de' Lambertazzi at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Musetta in La bohème in Munich; during the Santa Fe Opera's 2006 summer festival season; at the

"Amarti, e nel martoro"
Imelda di' Lambertazzi (Donizetti)

Washington National Opera; and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Cabell's repertoire includes Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Juliette (Roméo et Juliette), The Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Adina (L'elisir d'amore), The Vixen (The Cunning Little Vixen), Musetta (La bohème), Lauretta and La Ciesca (Gianni Schicchi), Clara (Porgy and Bess), La Princesse in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, La Femme in Poulenc's La voix humaine, Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw and Arsamenes in Xerxes. She has recently added the role of Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo. Her concert repertoire includes Mahler's Symphonies No. 2 and 4, Poulenc's Gloria, Orff's Carmina Burana, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Tippett's A Child of Our Time, André Previn's Honey and Rue and Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Nicole Cabell has collaborated with major conductors such as

"Summertime"
Porgy and Bess (Gershwin)

Sir Andrew Davis, James Conlon, Daniel Barenboim, Antonio Pappano, André Previn and Sir Raymond Leppard. In 2011 she sang Donna Elvira in Klon and Berlin, and was invited to be a commentator on the 2011 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. During the 2012 festival season at the Santa Fe Opera, Ms. Cabell will sing the role of Leila in Georges Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles. Nicole Cabell is signed to a recording contract with Decca. Her first recording, released in 2006, was of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, conducted by John Mauceri, while her first solo recital album, Soprano, is of arias in French, Italian and English. It was released in 2007 and received two awards: the Georg Solti Prize Orphée d’Or 2007 by the Académie du Disque Lyrique for a promising recording career and The Gramophone Magazine's Editor's Choice in May 2007. She sang the title role in the 2007 recording of Donizetti's Imelda de' Lambertazzi for Opera Rara, conducted by Mark Elder with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She appeared in a filmed version of Puccini's La Bohème as Musetta for Deutsche Grammophon, alongside Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bertrand de Billy. The film debuted on PBS in December

"Una parola, o Adina"
L'elisir d'Amore (Donizetti)
with Giuseppe Filianoti

2009. During the 2011-12 season, Nicole Cabell returns to the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago for Micaela in Carmen, to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for Leila in Les Pêcheurs de Perles, and for an exciting role debut: Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with the Oper Köln and the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. She will also return to the Cincinnati Opera in one of her most acclaimed roles, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. In concert, she will return to the Edinburgh Festival as the Mater Gloriosa in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, followed by Gala Opening Concerts in Kuala Lumpur with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and their music director, Claus Peter Flor. Nicole Cabell will appear in solo recitals in Toronto and Louisville, KY. Future engagements include returns to Chicago, Montreal, Tokyo and the soprano’s San Francisco Opera debut, all in leading roles. [Source, Source, Source]