Aegean Verdi Festival June 2006



Mytilene, Lesvos


A concert version of Giuseppe Verdi's Orietta di Lesbo will be performed to the music of Joan of Arc with the alternate libretto on the Greek story of orietta di Lesbo, a libretto unheard since the 1850s in Italy. The libretto was used due to Papal censorship in Italy at the time.

Members of the Oregon Repertory Singers, the Lewis & Clark College Choir and other individuals will join with a regional orchestra and soloists from two countries, including internationally traveled opera singer Ioanna Sfekas-Karvelas, soprano from Lesvos, Greece, baritone Christopher Wells from the San Francisco Opera and tenor Lance Ferguson of Linfield College. Dr. George Skipworth will conduct.

A pre-concert lecture will be offered at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, by Dr. Nora Beck in the hour before the performance, and she will narrate the lecture-performance scene by scene.

The Portland performance is a prelude to a Lewis & Clark sponsored three-week symphonic/choral/operatic festival to be held on the island of Lesvos in June, 2006 entitled The Aegean Verdi Festival, in which orchestra members, choruses and soloists will attend from several nations. A symphonic concert featuring Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherasade, Verdi's Requiem and the Orietta di Lesbo will be performed.

The lost libretto of Verdi was recently rediscovered in Italy by Sfekas-Karvelas and a small group of musicologists from Lesvos, bringing this astounding find to the world music stage. A noted dramatic soprano, Sfekas-Karvelas has studied with renowned instructors and masters in Europe and the U.S. She has taught and performed in the U.S., Europe, and Russia, specializing in the dramatic roles of Verdi, such as Lady Macbeth, Abigaille, Elisabetta, Leonora in Trovatore and Forza, Puccini's Turandot and Tosca, and the Wagnerian heroines Sieglinde and Ortrund. She has recorded the role of Lady Macbeth in Verd's Macbeth with the Polish National Radio Orchestra.
Recently she has expanded her repertoire to include the role of Elektra in R. Strauss's Elektra, which she has studied with Maestro David Aronson of the Vienna Staatsoper.



HCS readers may wish to view other articles and releases in our permanent, extensive archives at the URL http://www.helleniccomserve.com/contents.html.

For more information about the Oregon or Aegean events, contact Michael Ford, Associate Vice President for Campus Life at email mford@lclark.edu, or the Music Department at Lewis & Clark College, or visit the website for L&C events at the URL http://www.lclark.edu.org/artslive.

For more information about vocalist Sfekas-Karvelas from Lesvos, see her website at the URL http://www.lesvos.com/karvelas/index.html.





2000 © Hellenic Communication Service, L.L.C. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.HellenicComServe.com