After Christine Brewer opened her season in a program of Wagner and Beethoven with the Atlanta Symphony, the Atlanta Journal Constitution marveled, "Brewer's soprano is an instrument of rare luxury and power, at once silken, roaring, luminous," and compared her to "the great Wagnerians from legend." Now the Grammy Award-winner, voted one of the top 20 sopranos of all time by BBC Music magazine, returns as soloist in Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas (Oct. 29) and in excerpts from the Ring with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen (Dec. 8 - 10). She also returns to Beethoven for five performances of his Missa solemnis with the Boston Symphony and Kurt Masur next spring, culminating in a performance at New York's Carnegie Hall (March 6). In another highlight of her 2011-12 season, the "superlative Strauss singer" (New York Times) undertakes the Four Last Songs by the great German late Romantic with the St. Louis Symphony and David Robertson (Jan. 13 & 14). She will make her Los Angeles Opera debut (March 14 & 17) starring in the hit Santa Fe Opera production of Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring, which she headlined last season. On Mother's Day, she presents a recital of music by Strauss, Marx, Thomson, Ives, and Smith with her regular collaborator pianist Craig Rutenberg at New York's Alice Tully Hall (May 13). In the concert hall, the opera house, and on the recital stage, Brewer demonstrates once again why she is, as the New York Times's Anthony Tommasini attests, "one of the best in the business."
When Santa Fe Opera debuted its new staging of Britten's comic opera Albert Herring in 2010, it was "the hit of the season," and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised the production's "first-rate cast," naming Brewer the standout star who "gave a terrific performance in every particular." The Santa Fe New Mexican confirmed that although "the Santa Fe Opera fills the leading roles with a cast that spills into the realm of the starry ... the show is stolen by the soprano Christine Brewer."For her much-anticipated Los Angeles Opera debut, Brewer will be joined, as in Santa Fe, by tenor Alek Shrader in the title role, under Paul Curran's direction. James Conlan, the company's Music Director, will conduct.Her dominance in the concert hall reflects the unique nature of her voice; as Tommasini recently explained, "Ms. Brewer is the uncommon singer of her vocal type whose voice can slice through a thick orchestra while still sounding lustrous" (New York Times). In addition to her appearances with the orchestras mentioned above, Brewer's 2011-12 season finds her in collaborations with the Cleveland Orchestra for Verdi's Requiem (May 31), the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (Jan 20), and the Pasadena Symphony (April 28).Videos