Park Avenue Armory Opens 2020 Recital Series With Performances By Emerging Italian Soprano Rosa Feola

Park Avenue Armory will embark on the eighth year of its Recital Series, a series of intimate chamber music performances in the austerely elegant Board of Officers, intended to continue the salon tradition of chamber music performances. The 2020 Recital Series will open with two performances by young Italian soprano Rosa Feola, Monday evening, January 13, 2020 and Wednesday evening, January 15, 2020, both at 7:30pm.

Established as a rising star throughout Europe, Feola has won over audiences in the United States through acclaimed appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as a soloist with the 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival, and in a Metropolitan Opera debut in spring 2019 as Gilda in Rigoletto. She will partner with Scottish pianist Iain Burnside to present a varied program that includes work highlighting the relationship between Italian music and poetry.

While audiences today may think first of opera when asked about Italian vocal music, Italy has also enjoyed a rich history of art song, embodied in song; for more than a century, it served as one of the country's most beloved musical art forms, enjoyed by the general public and musicologists alike. This genre continued to develop through the 19th century, when members of the generazione dell'Ottanta (a group of composers born in the 1880s), inspired by both contemporary and historically important Italian poets, brought forth the richness and variety of art song once more. Works by some of these composers and more will be featured on Feola's January program, including selections by Rossini, Martucci, Pinsuti, Respighi, and Ponchielli, as well as Liszt's Tre Sonetti di Petrarca. Full program details available are below.

Feola and Burnside recorded much of these selections on her debut solo album, Musica e Poesia, released on Opus Arte in 2015 to critical praise. Erica Jeal of The Guardian wrote, "Her singing is marked by poise and elegance, and she spins out seamless phrases with unflagging care for the words..." (7 Jan 2016). The Times' Neil Fisher called her voice "... refreshing with a hint of sweetness and a pleasant glow of Mediterranean sunshine ... the charm here is listening to Feola's pure tone and immaculate diction ..." (8 Jan 2016).

The Recital Series will continue on with The Lindemann Recital February 18 and 20, 2020, featuring Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists soprano Gabriella Reyes and mezzo-soprano Megan Esther Grey performing selections from Mahler, Rossini, and more, accompanied by Nate Raskin. On March 11 and 12, 2020, "one of the cello realm's most brilliant young princes" (HuffPost) Nicolas Altstaedt will perform all of J.S. Bach's suites for solo cello. Tenor Allan Clayton will make his North American recital debut at the Armory, with an all-English-language program on April 27 and 29, 2020. Charismatic American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton will finish off the Armory's spring recitals on May 15 and 17, 2020,

Tickets for Feola and Burnside's performances, January 13 and 15, are $75 and are available for purchase by phone at (212) 933-5812 or online at armoryonpark.org.

ROSA FEOLA, soprano
IAIN BURNSIDE, piano
Board of Officers Room

Giuseppe Martucci: Tre Pezzi, Op. 84
Maggiolata
Pianto antico
Nevicata

Ottorino Respighi: Quattro Rispetti toscani, P. 103
Quando nasceste voi
Venitelo a vedere 'I mi' piccino
Viene di là, lontan lontano
Razzolan, sopra l'aja, le galline

Gioachino Rossini: La regata veneziana
Anzoleta avanta la regata
Anzoleta co passa la regata
Anzoleta dopo la regata

- Interval -

Franz Liszt: Tre Sonetti del Petrarca, S. 270
Pace non trovo (Sonetto 104 di Petrarca)
Benedetto sia il giorno (Sonetto 47 di Petrarca)
I' vidi in terra angelici costumi (Sonetto 123 di Petrarca)

Ciro Pinsuti: Sonetto di Dante, "Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare"

Amilcare Ponchielli: Sonetto di Dante

Italian soprano Rosa Feola came to international attention after winning Second Prize, Audience Prize and Zarzuela Prize at the Plácido Domingo World Opera Competition (2010).

Since her acclaimed debut in as Corinna in Il Viaggio a Reims under Kent Nagano, Feola has continued to perform around the world in such houses as the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opernhaus Zürich, Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Glyndebourne, Teatro Real Madrid, and NCPA Beijing, under conductors such as Nicola Luisotti, Giampaolo Bisanti, Louis Langrée, and Riccardo Muti, with whom she collaborates regularly, recently for Mahler Symphony No. 4 and Nanetta in Falstaff with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

A highly successful 2018-19 season saw her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Gilda in Rigoletto, her role debut in the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at Theater Basel, and her Salzburg Festival opera and role debut as Dircé in Médée. She returned to Bayerische Staatsoper as Musetta in La bohème and Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, and to Opernhaus Zürich for Sandrina in La Finta Giardiniera and Gilda in Rigoletto.

Next, Feola returns to the role of Adina in L'elisir d'amore at Opernhaus Zurich, La Scala, and for debuts at Wiener Staatsoper and Hamburg Staatsoper. She performs Donna Fiorilla in Il turco in Italia at La Scala and Opernhaus Zurich, returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for La Sonnambula, and to the Bayerische Staatsoper for Rigoletto. Later, Feola debuts at Liceu Barcelona as Violetta in La traviata and at the Royal Opera House, and returns to the Metropolitan Opera.

In 2015, she released her debut solo album Musica e Poesia (Opus Arte) with Iain Burnside, featuring music by Respighi, Martucci, Ponchielli, Pinsuti, and Liszt.

Iain Burnside is a pianist who has appeared in recital with many of the world's leading singers ("pretty much ideal" BBC Music Magazine). He is also an insightful programmer with an instinct for the telling juxtaposition. His recordings straddle an exuberantly eclectic repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to the cutting edge, as in the Gramophone Award-winning NMC Songbook. Recent recordings include the complete Rachmaninov songs (Delphian) with seven outstanding Russian artists ("the results are electrifying" Daily Telegraph). Burnside's passion for English song is reflected in acclaimed CDs of Britten, Finzi, Ireland, Butterworth, and Vaughan Williams, many with baritone Roderick Williams.

Away from the piano, Burnside is active as a writer and broadcaster. As presenter of BBC Radio 3's Voices, he won a Sony Radio Award. And for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, he has devised a number of singular theater pieces: A Soldier and a Maker, based on the life of Ivor Gurney, was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Armistice Day and performed at the Barbican Centre and Cheltenham Festival; his more recent project Swansong played at the Kilkenny Arts Festival and London's Milton Court.

He recently performed the three Schubert song cycles with Roderick Williams at Wigmore Hall, where he appears this season in a major series of Russian Song. Projects elsewhere feature Ailish Tynan, Rosa Feola, Andrew Watts, Robin Tritschler, and Benjamin Appl. Burnside is Artistic Director of the Ludlow English Song Weekend and Artistic Consultant to Grange Park Opera.