Alan Gilbert Leads COSI FAN TUTTE at Julliard School, Now thru 11/19

Alan Gilbert, whose tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic has just been extended through the 2016-17 season, heads across Lincoln Center Plaza this month to lead three fully-staged performances of Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Juilliard School (tonight, Nov 14 and Nov 17, & 19), where he serves as Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies.

Directed by Stephen Wadsworth, whose Metropolitan Opera successes include Boris Godunov and Iphigénie en Tauride, this new production is a co-presentation by the conservatory and the opera company. The Juilliard Orchestra supports a cast drawn from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Juilliard's Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, with set design by Charlie Corcoran, lighting by David Lander, and costumes by Camille Assaf.

Gilbert, who became Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at Juilliard in September 2011, and who also holds the school's William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies, explains:

"I have found working with the incredibly dedicated instrumental students at Juilliard to be enormously inspiring, and I am very gratified now to be sharing my passion for opera not only with them but also with Juilliard vocal students and Lindemann Young Artists. This is precisely the sort of project for which the collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and the Juilliard School decided to join forces, and it reflects the chemistry that the founders of Lincoln Center envisioned when they brought all these cultural institutions together."

Gilbert's most recent opera performances were in Stockholm where, last season, he conducted Wagner's Lohengrin in his debut with the Royal Swedish Opera. Over the past few seasons he has scored notable operatic triumphs in New York. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in November 2008, leading John Adams's Doctor Atomic in the first New York staging of the opera, and the Met's first production of an Adams opera; a DVD of that production, conducted by Gilbert, won a 2012 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. With the New York Philharmonic, he led performances of operas by Ligeti and Janácek that were enthusiastically praised. The production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre was described as an "instant milestone" by the New York Times and an "improbable sensation" by the New Yorker. Writing about the production of Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen that followed a season later, veteran critic Peter G. Davis noted for Musical America: "Clearly Gilbert not only loves Janácek, but also understands his music, its tricky ebb and flow, structural originality, unusual textural blends and, above all, its deep humanity. 'The operatic event of the season,' someone mumbled on the way out after the first performance on Wednesday. He might well be right."

The upcoming production of Così marks the conductor's first appearances since his return from Europe, where he recently made his long-awaited Berlin Staatskapelle debut with performances of Beethoven and Bartók, and gave renditions of Stravinsky and Hindemith at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw that the Classical Source deemed "absolutely glorious."

Later this month, Gilbert rejoins the New York Philharmonic to direct Musical America's Instrumentalist of the Year Gil Shaham in Barber's Violin Concerto, on a program with the New York premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky's Symphony (2012) – a Philharmonic co-commission – of which the Los Angeles Times declared: "No note felt wasted. To hear Stucky's Symphony once was to want to hear it again."

A detailed list of the conductor's upcoming fall engagements follows, and additional information may be found at his website at www.alangilbert.com.

Alan Gilbert: upcoming engagements, fall 2012

Nov 14, 17, & 19; New York, NY
Juilliard Orchestra
Mozart: Così fan tutte (Cast drawn from the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at Juilliard)

On November 15, Alan Gilbert will be seen conducting Tracy Morgan and musicians from the New York Philharmonic on the NBC hit show, 30 Rock. The show airs every Thursday at 8 PM Eastern Time (check times for local listings).

Nov 29, 30, & Dec 1; New York, NY
New York Philharmonic
New York, NY
Stucky: Symphony (New York premiere, Philharmonic co-commission)
Barber: Violin Concerto (with Gil Shaham)
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

Dec 6 & 9; Hamburg, Germany (Laeiszhalle Musikhalle)
NDR Hamburg Symphony
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Frank Peter Zimmermann)
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Act II

Dec 7; Lübeck, Germany (Musik und Kongresshalle)
NDR Hamburg Symphony
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Frank Peter Zimmermann)
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Act II

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