Program Notes }
Matth u Pl acek
Angela Meade last appeared with the BSO
in 2011, singing Verdi’s Requiem, with
Music Director Marin Alsop conducting.
Jennifer
Johnson Cano
A 2012 Richard
Tucker Career Grant
and Opera Index
winner and 2011 Sara Tucker Study Grant
recipient, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson
Cano joined The Lindemann Young Artist
Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera in 2008 and made her Met
debut in 2009–2010. As First Prize winner
of the 2009 Young Concert Artist International Auditions, she was awarded the
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and
Princeton University Prizes and has given
stunning recital debuts at Merkin Hall
and the Kennedy Center, and in Boston,
Philadelphia, Houston and Chicago.
Following performances at The Metropolitan Opera as Mercedes, Emilia,
Wellgunde and Waltraute last season,
Ms. Cano debuted this season as Meg
Page in Falstaff and Bersi in Andrea Chenier. Other operatic debuts include The
Sharp Eared Fox in Janáček’s Cunning
Little Vixen with the Cleveland Orchestra
and Franz Welser-Moest in May and
Marguerite in Berlioz’s La Damnation de
Faust in collaboration with the Tucson
Symphony and Tucson Desert Song
Festival in February 2014.
In addition to her continued relationship
with The Metropolitan Opera, Ms. Cano
has appeared with esteemed orchestras
as the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Cleveland Orchestra, San
Francisco Symphony and Orchestra of St.
Luke’s. She toured with Musicians from
Marlboro singing Respighi’s Il tramonto and Cuckson’s Der gayst funem shture,
recorded live and released by the Marlboro
Recording Society.
Ms. Cano is a native of St. Louis, Missouri and earned her bachelor’s degree in
music from Webster University and her
master’s degree from Rice University.
Jennifer Johnson Cano is making her
BSO debut.
Kr isten Ho eb er man
role of Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani. She had
previously sung on the Met stage as one
of the winners of the 2007 Metropolitan
Opera National Council Auditions, a
process that is documented in the film
The Audition.
During the 2013 –2014 season, Meade
sang the title role of Norma at the
Metropolitan Opera and portrayed Alice
Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff under the baton
of Maestro James Levine, seen as part of
the Met’s Live in HD series around the
world. She made her Frankfurt Opera
debut as Fidelia in concert performances
of Puccini’s Edgar and her Italian debut
at the Teatro Regio di Torino as Mathilde in Rossini’s Guglielmo Tell.
Angela Meade has appeared in recital
at the Kennedy Center, and as soloist
with the Boston Symphony, Cleveland
Orc hestra, Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, The Philadelphia
Orchestra and Seattle Symphony, among
others. Conductors with whom she has
collaborated in concert include Roberto
Abbado, Will Crutchfield, Thomas
Dausgaard, Charles Dutoit, Manfred
Honeck, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gerard Schwarz and
Osmo Vänskä.
Dimitri Pittas
Dimitri Pittas has
appeared on leading
opera stages throughout North America
and Europe, including debuts with the
Bavarian State Opera, the Vienna State
Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Canadian Opera Company.
He is a graduate of the Metropolitan
Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and has been heard on
the Met stage as Rodolfo in La bohème,
Macduff in Macbeth, Nemorino in L’elisir
d’amore and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte.
His repertoire includes performances
as Alfredo in La traviata, Tebaldo in I
Capuletti e i Montecchi, Edgardo in Lucia
di Lammermoor and the Duke of Mantua
in Rigoletto. For his debut with Canadian
Opera Company as the Duke, the Toronto
Star said, “Dimitri Pittas comes off the
best as The Duke of Mantua, with a flexible voice that can express real love and
shallow desire with equal conviction.”
Mr. Pittas begins the current season
performing Verdi’s Requiem with the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam. He also performs this work
with the Kansas City Symphony later this
season. Mr. Pittas makes his debut at the
Hamburg State Opera singing the role of
Oronte in a new production of Verdi’s I
Lombardi. Additional performances include Mr. Pittas’s return to the Canadian
Opera Company, first as Rodolfo in La
bohème, then to sing his first performances
of Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera, and
to Deutsche Oper Berlin to sing Nemorino in a new production of L’elisir d’amore.
Dimitri Pittas is making his BSO debut.
James Morris
Bass-baritone James
Morris is world
famous for his performances in opera,
concert, recital and recording. With a
repertoire including works by Wagner,
Verdi, Puccini, Offenbach, Stravinsky,
Mussorgsky, Mozart, Gounod and Britten, Mr. Morris has performed in virtually
every international opera house and has
appeared with the major orchestras of
Europe and the United States.
Recently, Mr. Morris debuts as the role
of Oroveso in Norma at the Metropolitan
Opera. He returned to the Lyric Opera of
Chicago as Hans Sachs in a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and
the Four Villains in Les contes d’ Hoffmann. Mr. Morris also returned to the
Metropolitan Opera in his signature role
of Scarpia in Tosca, and then as Ramfis
in Aida and Commendatore in the new
production of Don Giovanni. When the
Metropolitan Opera brought Benjamin
Britten’s Billy Budd into the repertoire,
Mr. Morris triumphed in the role of John
Claggart and repeated performances of
the role in the spring of 2012. Mr. Morris
recently added to his repertoire the role