Susan Graham to Appear in BSO's 'DAMNATION', Met's 'WIDOW', Lyric's TAHITI and More in 2017-18

Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham opens her 2017-18 season with a return to the Boston Symphony to star in Berlioz's La damnation de Faust under Charles Dutoit.

She reprises her account of the title role in Susan Stroman's take on Lehár's The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera, and at Lyric Opera of Chicago she helps celebrate Leonard Bernstein's centennial in the comic one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti.

She joins the BSO again in January under Andris Nelsons to perform Mahler's Third Symphony, and with the San Francisco Symphony, again led by Dutoit, she performs Ravel's Shéhérazade. Graham's season is rounded out with recitals in Atlanta and St. Louis, Tulsa Opera's 70th anniversary gala, and a title role debut in Marc Blitzstein's Regina at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

After winning acclaim in the Boston Symphony's Der Rosenkavalier last season, Graham has two upcoming return engagements with the orchestra. First she sings her signature role of Marguerite in Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, with Charles Dutoit on the podium. Long a byword for excellence in French repertoire, the mezzo has been recognized with a "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur" from the French government, and she performs another staple of the repertoire, Ravel's Shéhérazade, with the San Francisco Symphony and Dutoit in the spring. Graham's second BSO engagement this season is a January performance, this time under the baton of Music Director Andris Nelsons, of Mahler's Symphony No. 3. The fifth movement of this six-movement symphony is one of Mahler's many settings of texts from the German folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, other examples of which Graham performed in Carnegie Hall with the Met Orchestra last season, when the New York Times praised her "plush voice," and "the combination of her vocal charisma and emotional restraint."

"America's favorite mezzo" (Gramophone) returns to the Metropolitan Opera in December and January to reprise her "vivacious and creamy-voiced" (New York Times) star turn as the wealthy widow Hanna Glawari in Susan Stroman's production of Lehár's The Merry Widow. When Graham originally starred in the same production in 2015, the New York Times, admiring her "clear and eloquent" tone, declared: "A straightforward, straight-talking presence, her Hanna ... has no pretensions and no illusions. But Ms. Graham's reserved, silky voice also gives the character a romantic side, as in her dreamy version of the celebrated 'Vilja Song.'" Graham celebrated the 25th anniversary of her Met debut last season, as one of three honorees - together with Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt - at the Metropolitan Opera Guild's 82nd Annual Luncheon. She also helped celebrate the Met's own 50th anniversary at Lincoln Center, in company with other great exponents of the genre from around the world.

Next year marks the centennial of the birth of Leonard Bernstein, and to honor the occasion Lyric Opera of Chicago presents Graham, baritone Nathan Gunn, and Broadway star Kate Baldwin in "Celebrating 100 Years of Bernstein," with the Lyric Opera Orchestra under renowned Broadway conductor David Chase. Graham and Gunn open the program with the comic one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti, followed by favorite songs from the Bernstein catalog.

The stylistic flexibility that makes Graham the perfect choice for Bernstein's trademark combination of operatic and Broadway elements is also on display when she makes her title role debut in seven performances of Marc Blitzstein's Regina - often compared stylistically with Trouble in Tahiti - at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, opposite veteran Met bass-baritone James Morris and Broadway and television actor Ron Raines. An adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, Regina is as demanding theatrically as it is musically, and the production marks the 30th anniversary of Graham's debut with the company in another American opera: Samuel Barber's Vanessa. When Graham played Anna in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I at Paris's Théâtre du Châtelet in 2014, the New York Times found her "close to perfection," and Opera News declared: "Opera singers in musicals can be disappointing, their sophisticated vocal techniques getting in the way of direct expression. No such caveats applied to Graham, whose performance was miraculously judged - a thread of golden sound bouncing off a crystal-clear delivery of the text." Rounding out Graham's season is a February gala celebrating the 70th anniversary of Tulsa Opera, and two spring recitals, at Atlanta's Emory University, where she also gives a master class, and at Washington University in St. Louis. There she reprises the recital program centered on Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und -leben that she recently premiered at London's Wigmore Hall and subsequently performed at venues across the U.S. and Europe.

Susan Graham: 2017-18 SEASON:

Oct 26-28
Boston, MA
Boston Symphony Orchestra / Charles Dutoit
Berlioz: La damnation de Faust (Marguerite)

Dec 14, 16, 20, 23, 27, 30; Jan 2, 5, 11
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Ward Stare, conductor
Lehár: The Merry Widow (Hanna Glawari)

Jan 18-20
Boston, MA
Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons
Mahler: Symphony No. 3

Feb 2 & 3
Atlanta, GA
Emory University
Recital and masterclass

Feb 17
Tulsa, OK
Tulsa Opera
Timothy Long, conductor
"The Stars Align": Anniversary Gala Celebration

March 10
Chicago, IL
Lyric Opera of Chicago
David Chase, conductor
"Celebrating 100 Years of Bernstein"
Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti (Dinah)

March 25
St. Louis, MO
Washington University in St. Louis
Guest Artist Series: recital

April 19-21
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Symphony / Charles Dutoit
Ravel: Shéhérazade

May 26, 31; June 6, 8, 16, 20, 24
St. Louis, MO
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Stephen Lord, conductor
Marc Blitzstein: Regina (Regina)

Photo Credit: Dario Acosta

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