NY Philharmonic Opening Night Gala to be Broadcast on PBS

Tune in to PBS on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. for Live From Lincoln Center's telecast of the New York Philharmonic's Opening Night Gala. Conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, the program will open with Samuel Barber's The School for Scandal Overture of 1931, and will also feature selections from Richard Strauss's Salome and Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, as well as Barber's Andromache's Farewell.

New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert, The Yoko Nagae Ceschina Chair, has created what New York Magazine called "a fresh future for the Philharmonic." He is the first native New Yorker to hold the post, and has introduced the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence; an annual three-week festival; and CONTACT!, the new-music series. In 2011-12 he conducts world premieres, three Mahler symphonies, a residency at London's Barbican Centre, and tours to Europe and California, with a season-concluding musical exploration of space at the Park Avenue Armory, featuring Stockhausen's theatrical immersion, Gruppen. Last season's highlights included two tours of European capitals, Carnegie Hall's 120th Anniversary Concert, Janá?ek's The Cunning Little Vixen, following 2010's wildly successful staging of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, which The New York Times called "an instant Philharmonic milestone. In September 2011 Alan Gilbert becomes Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he is also the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. Conductor Laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of Hamburg's NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading orchestras nationally and internationally. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in November 2008 leading John Adams's Doctor Atomic, and received an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, his alma mater.

Soprano Deborah Voigt is internationally renowned for her performances of the operas of Wagner and Strauss, in addition to her portrayals of such popular Italian operatic parts as the title roles in Puccini's Tosca, Verdi's Aida, Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino. In the 2010-11 season, Ms. Voigt made her role debut as Brünnhilde in Robert Lepage's new production of Wagner's Die Walküre at The Metropolitan Opera; her house role debuts as Minnie in Puccini's La fanciulla del West at The Met and Lyric Opera of Chicago; and her Washington National Opera debut as Salome in a new production of R. Strauss's opera by Francesca Zambello. In concert, she performed with the Dresden Staatskapelle at Lincoln Center and will appear on an evening of Broadway songs with The Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall. In the summer, as the first artist-in-residence at New York's Glimmerglass Festival, she starred in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun and in a one-woman show written by Terrance McNally and directed by Francesca Zambello. Deborah Voigt's discography of complete operas ranges from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde to Berlioz's Les Troyens and R. Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten. Her solo discs for EMI Classics are All My Heart, featuring songs by American composers, and Obsessions, with arias and scenes by Wagner and Strauss.

Founded in 1842, the New York Philharmonic is one of the oldest symphony orchestras in the world. Since its inception, it has played a leading role in American musical life, reaching out to audiences with touring that began in 1882; recordings beginning in 1917, most recently through an annual series of downloads; and radio broadcasts since 1922, now represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week, syndicated nationally 52 weeks a year.