(New York, NY - February 22, 2005) Conductor Yves Abel will lead The Mannes Orchestra on Thursday, April 7, 2005 at 8:00 p.m., at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, 65th Street and Broadway, NYC. The program will feature Debussy’s “Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune,” Britten’s Les Illuminations, Op. 18, and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan, an alumna of Mannes, will be the soloist in the Britten song cycle, Les Illuminations, Op. 18.
To obtain tickets to this free concert, contact the Box Office at Alice Tully Hall at (212) 875-5050 or go to www.lincolncenter.org.
Conductor Yves Abel, an alumnus of Mannes, is becoming one of his generation’s most compelling conductors in both the operatic and symphonic repertoires. Maestro Abel has led acclaimed productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Netherlands Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival. His recordings include “Thaïs” with Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson and Giuseppe Sabbatini for Decca, “Madame Butterfly” with the Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos Records and two discs of French operettas, the first with Susan Graham and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Erato and the second with Patricia Petibon and the Orchestra of the Opera National de Lyon for Decca.
Maestro Abel recently made his successful debut at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, in a new production of “Don Pasquale” and has since returned to conduct “Les Dialogues des Carmelites.”
As a French/Canadian, Maestro Abel has a special affinity for French repertoire and has won significant praise for his achievements as founder and Music Director of L’Opéra Français de New York, with whom he has regenerated rare operas of Hérold, Poulenc, Offenbach, Bizet, Cherubini, Chabrier, Donizetti, Gluck and Gretry. The company has been performing at Lincoln Center since 1994.
Maestro Abel’s orchestral engagements include concerts with the Netherland Philharmonic at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and the Toronto Symphony.
Following his studies at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory, Maestro Abel studied at Mannes College of Music and the Tanglewood Music Center with Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Gunther Herbig, and Sir Roger Norrington.
Soprano Jennifer Zetlan received her Bachelor of Music with honors from Mannes College of Music in May 2004. This performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations marks her Alice Tully Hall debut. Her performances in the 2003-04 season included the role of Euridice in Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” with Opera in the Ozarks, and appearances at the Liederkranz Foundation, Foothills Chamber Music Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Alexander Paley Music Festival in Richmond, Virginia, and in New York. While at Mannes, Ms. Zetlan was a scholarship student and studied with Bonnie Hamilton. She performed with the Mannes Opera and in the Mannes Festivals “The Birth of Romanticism” and “La Belle Epoque.” She maintains a private voice studio and teaches in two schools in and around New York City. She is currently a student of Cynthia Hoffman at The Juilliard School, where she is in the Master’s degree program.
The next concert in the Mannes Orchestra series will take place on Thursday, May 5, 2005, 8:00 p.m., at Columbia University’s Miller Theater.
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Mannes College of Music, founded in 1916, is one of the world’s major conservatories of music. A division of New School University, Mannes offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs, as well as a Professional Studies Diploma program. Notable alumni from Mannes include soprano Frederica von Stade, pianists Murray Perahia and Richard Goode, and conductors Semyon Bychkov, Myung-Whun Chung, JoAnn Falletta and Julius Rudel. Joel Lester is Dean of Mannes. For further information on Mannes College of Music, call (212) 580-0210 or go to the Web site at www.mannes.edu.