Ailyn Pérez & Stephen Costello to Perform at Stern Grove Festival, 8/18

Soprano Ailyn Pérez and tenor Stephen Costello pair to sing Verdi arias and duets with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra at the city's 76th free Stern Grove Festival on August 18. Pérez and Costello will be helping the San Francisco Opera celebrate this year's bicentennial of Verdi's birth with a program of solo arias and duets. The two singers will return to San Francisco Opera for more Verdi in the summer of 2014, taking on the lead roles in the company's production of La traviata. When they performed together in a recent Lincoln Center gala, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini noted that the couple "displayed palpable chemistry in a tender duet."

The two singers, each esteemed winners of the Richard Tucker Award, have beguiled critics and audiences alike with their fresh voices and genuine rapport as husband and wife. About their performance as the star-crossed couple in Puccini's La bohème, the Cincinnati Enquirer said: "It was impressive to see how beautifully they could sing ... Costello and Pérez communicated a chemistry and genuine quality that made them believable as the young lovers." San Diego Arts gave the two an equally glowing review for their turn in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette: "In Ailyn Pérez's Juliet and Stephen Costello's Romeo we easily see the Bard's impetuous, enraptured young lovers, but more importantly, we hear a fullness and warmth in their voices that make Gounod's opulent lines soar."

Pérez and Costello appeared together on the cover of the February issue of Classical Singer magazine, and the documentary feature "Stephen Costello and Ailyn Pérez: An Operatic Love Story" is also available on YouTube. A few weeks ago, the couple helped inaugurate England's Branscombe Festival - curated by Gramophone Award-winning pianist and broadcaster Iain Burnside - with a recital of duets. Pérez and Costello performed together at the 2012 Richard Tucker Gala, which was broadcast nationally on Live from Lincoln Center and is still available for on-demand streaming. In November, the two Richard Tucker Award winners return to Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall to perform in the 2013 gala. And in December, the pair will give a duo recital at Philadelphia's KimMel Center.

More information on the Stern Grove Festival is available here.

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