Opera Singers Join Andrea Bocelli in Central Park Concert

South African soprano Pretty Yende is a
frequent concert guest of Mr. Bocelli.

"Ordinarily it is difficult for officials to estimate the crowd size for a concert in Central Park. But every attendee at Thursday night’s free performance there by the superstar crossover tenor Andrea Bocelli had to have a ticket, obtained in advance. And 60,000 were given out....Mr. Bocelli’s fans seemed thrilled, rain or no rain. There remains a considerable divide between the passions of the audience he has reached (his recordings have sold more than 65 million, according to his Web site) and the assessment of most music critics....The soprano Ana María Martínez joined Mr. Bocelli for the impassioned

Puerto Rican soprano
Ana María Martínez

duet 'Vicino a te,' from Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. And the soprano Pretty Yende was his partner in the 'O soave fanciulla' duet from Puccini’s Bohème. But once again, other than the announcement of her name, there was no introduction of Ms. Yende, a young artist from South Africa who was a co-winner of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition this summer." [Source] The New York Philharmonic was the back-up band for the evening with Music Director Alan Gilbert conducting the whole affair.

PBS Features NY Philharmonic and Deborah Voigt For Opener

(Photo: Dario Acosta)

Deborah Voigt will appear with the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 as part of the "Live From Lincoln Center" series on PBS which will broadcast the performance live. The program includes Samuel Barber's The School for Scandal Overture of 1931 and Andromache's Farewell, excerpts from Richard Strauss's Salome and Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser.

Michelle DeYoung as Judith
(Photo: Brian Harkin/The New York Times)

"The centerpiece of Friday’s program at Avery Fisher Hall was a taut, darkly radiant performance of Bartok’s one-act opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. The work is a moody, stylized fairy tale about the duke and his new wife, Judith, who after gradually opening seven locked doors in her husband’s castle finally reveals the three former wives he has murdered. As the opera ends, she takes her place among them...For sheer power few moments in music can compete with the C major blasts at the opening of the fifth door, behind which lies Bluebeard’s expansive kingdom. As the Avery Fisher house lights were suddenly thrown on, the Philharmonic’s brass section shone, and the excellent mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, as Judith, unleashed a thrilling high C." [Source]