The Verdi Chorus to Kick Off 41st Season With WE ARE VERDI BIZET

The Verdi Chorus will kick off its 41st season with its Fall 2024 Concert We Are Verdi Bizet for two performances only at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica on November 16 and 17, 2024.  Led by Anne Marie Ketchum, who is celebrating forty-one consecutive years as Artistic Director of the organization, the Verdi Chorus is the only choral group in Southern California that focuses primarily on the dramatic and diverse music for opera chorus. The program will feature selections from three Verdi operas – I Lombardi, Don Carlo and Rigoletto and Bizet’s Carmen and The Pearl Fishers.

The program will also feature four guest soloists: critically acclaimed soprano Shana Blake Hill, who has been described as a “fearless actress” and “visually and vocally voluptuous” by Opera News and The Philadelphia Enquirer; award -winning mezzo soprano Audrey Babcock, who is quickly gaining notoriety for her commanding, powerful performances as Carmen and her dark, hypnotic portrayals of Maddalena in Rigoletto; tenor Todd Wilander, praised by The New York Times for his “brave, vocally assured portrayals” and who has returned for over nine seasons thus far with The Metropolitan Opera; and critically praised dramatic baritone Malcolm MacKenzie, who has been heard at leading opera houses throughout the U.S. and Europe, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Paris Opera (Bastille), Finland’s Savonlinna Festival, Washington National Opera, and Los Angeles Opera, among many others. 
 
These performances are made possible, in part, through the generous support of the Sahm Family Foundation, the Colburn Foundation, by grant funding from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the Creative Recovery LA Initiative through the Federal American Rescue Plan Act, and the City of Santa Monica through the Santa Monica Arts Commission.
 
Conductor Anne Marie Ketchum says, “I have always loved Verdi for the fact that he treats the chorus as a character in his stories – giving them beautiful melody, exciting drama, and arresting theatre. We hear it in I Lombardi. In fact, O Signore is a very famous piece in Italy, taught to school children alongside Va, Pensiero, and like Va, Pensiero, O Signore is a piece that looks back on a beloved homeland.
 
Both Verdi and Bizet were towering masters of the 19th century opera scene. They were writing some of their greatest masterpieces at the same time, and both were exquisite composers of melody. Though we program excerpts from Verdi’s operas for almost every concert we present, since his output was so great, in this concert we are also performing excerpts from Bizet’s two most famous operas, The Pearl Fishers, written in 1864, and Carmen written in 1875, the year he died.  
 
When Carmen was first performed it was not well received; people thought it was in poor taste, even scandalous, with its depiction of seduction and women smoking cigarettes! Later, Carmen became one of the most loved works in the opera repertoire worldwide.  Some have even said it was the beginning of Verismo opera because of its subject matter – it broke the mold of what was being presented at the time.
 
Both Verdi and Bizet also employed the use of exotic locales in their work.  Bizet’s Carmen and The Pearl Fishers, in addition to having some of the greatest operatic music ever written, featured exotic (for the time) locales – with Carmen set in Spain and The Pearl Fishers set on the island of Ceylon. In both of these operas Bizet utilized musical elements from these two cultures in the melodies, harmonies and rhythms.
 
Another thing that ties Verdi and Bizet together is that both loved to create three-dimensional human beings with their loves, hates, jealousies and inner feelings, as is evident with Bizet’s Carmen and in Verdi’s Rigoletto, in which the pure relationship between a father and a daughter ends in tragedy.
 
Ketchum continues, “It only makes sense to devote a program to these two operatic powerhouses, and the four guest soloists I’ve engaged for this concert are four of the most powerful soloists to have sung with the Verdi Chorus. When you have singers like this, it makes all the sense in the world to present the exquisite quartet from Rigoletto.  Malcom MacKenzie will be stunning in the title role of the Duke’s tragic jester, The Pearl Fisher’s Leila is one of Shana Blake Hill’s signature roles, Audrey Babcock is quickly becoming the definitive Carmen, and Todd Wilander is the absolute perfect tenorrissimo for these operas, and fits into every one of them beautifully.”
  
The Verdi Chorus prepares for concerts with rehearsals every Monday night.  There, an amazing thing happens as over 50 singers gather from every walk of life to become the Verdi Chorus.  This wide swath of people includes singers from 20 to 87 who come from a variety of professions, and yet have one thing in common: the desire to sing side by side each week and delve into the rich, dramatic world of opera.  They in turn are joined by up-and-coming opera singers at the beginning of their careers, and college students who have just begun to realize their operatic gifts, as all of them become one under the direction of Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum. Each rehearsal is like a vocal master class. 
 
Further demonstrating the organization’s mission to provide performance opportunities to young professional singers, sixteen highly promising singers are hired as section leaders and rehearsal coaches. Known as the Fox Singers, named in memory of long-time Chorus and Board member Walter Fox, these singers assist the Artistic Director, provide direction for their sections in rehearsals, and have opportunities to perform as featured singers in performances. The Fox Singers also perform on occasion independently of the full Chorus, serving as a showcase for the singers and as ambassadors for the Verdi Chorus. Performances of special arias and ensembles have been presented at venues in Southern California including the Annenberg Beach House, the Huntington Library, and the Nixon Library.
 
The Chorus is also proud to continue with the Sahm Foundation Apprentice Singers program that was established in 2015, in which talented vocal music students at the college level gain the opportunity to work with the Chorus in rehearsals and sing operatic music in concert. Each receives a scholarship to provide funds with which they can broaden their music studies.  Sahm Foundation Apprentices who successfully complete the program are invited back to sing with the Chorus for subsequent sessions.
 
Apprentices for this session, named in honor of a generous grant from the Sahm Family Foundation, are soprano Sabrina Dominguez, soprano Brenda Osorio, and tenors Ted Allen and Patrick Tsoi.  
 
Performance times are Saturday, November 16 at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, November 17 at 4:00 pm at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, located at 1220 2nd Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Tickets are now available for purchase at www.verdichorus.org. Priority seating is available for $50, general admission is $40, seniors are $30, and students aged 25 and under with a valid ID are $10.  
 

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