Ted Sperling, Artistic Director of MasterVoices, announced details of the celebrated chorus’ 81st season, celebrating the power of the human voice to unite, inspire and connect since 1941. The 2022-23 season opens on October 25 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Mr. Sperling leading a concert staging of Bizet’s Carmen in its original Opéra Comique version, with dialogue rather than recitative, sung in an English translation by legendary Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick. The MasterVoices performance, suspended in March 2020 due to the pandemic, will mark the New York premiere of Harnick’s full translation.
Joining the 120–member MasterVoices chorus is mezzo soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson, “a singer, stylist and actress of tremendous gifts” (Opera Today), as Carmen. MasterVoices favorite, rising soprano Mikaela Bennett, who was featured in the chorus’ A Joyful Noise concert last December at Carnegie Hall, sings the role of Micaëla; and baritone John Brancy, featured in MasterVoices’ theatrical song cycle Myths and Hymns, which is nominated for a 2022 New York Emmy Award, appears as Escamillo. Sammi Cannold directs, and the choreographer is Gustavo Zajac.
The season continues March 23 at Central Synagogue. It will include two beloved works of traditional Jewish liturgy set by master composers – Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service and Kurt Weill’s Kiddush – as well as the world premiere of a new work by Israeli-American composer Daniel Rein, commissioned by MasterVoices. The performance features baritone Justin Austin, tenor Daniel Mutlu, who is also the Senior Cantor of Central Synagogue, and David Strickland, organist at Central Synagogue.
The last concert of the season on May 3 at Carnegie Hall is a concert staging of the 1882 comic opera Iolanthe, by W.S. Gilbert (libretto) and Arthur Sullivan (music), directed and conducted by Ted Sperling. Iolanthe, with “one of Sullivan’s finest scores” (The New York Times), is a battle of the sexes pitting members of Britain’s House of Lords against the Fairy Queen and her kin. Yet, its themes are supremely relatable today; it tells of how a minority of landed gentry makes rules that dominate the majority, how boorish masculinity disrupts and dominates a tranquil civilization of women, and how all that may still lead to surprising results.
More information at www.MasterVoices.org
