The Metropolitan Opera resumes their Met Stars Live in Concert series with this recital by soprano Sonya Yoncheva which will be streamed from the Baroque library of the Schussenried Cloister in southwest Germany. The concert was originally scheduled for last November, but was postponed due to non-Covid related illness.
Serving as Yoncheva’s accompanist is Julien Quinten.
The announced program includes works by Giuseppe Verdi (Aida, Il Trovatore); Antonin Dvořák’s (Rusalka), Giacomo Puccini (La Bohème, Le Villi, Madama Butterfly), Henry Purcell (Dido and Aeneas), George Frideric Handel (Rinaldo), Jules Massenet (Thaïs, Manon), Georges Bizet (Carmen) and a song made famous by Édith Piaf (but not the first one that comes to mind.)
If you’ve been following the nightly streaming opera productions from the Met you will have seen and heard Yoncheva in La Bohème, La Traviata, Luisa Miller, Otello and Tosca.
Zachary Woolfe, in his New York Times review of the 2017 production of La Traviata at the Met, was mightily impressed with Yoncheva.
“Ms. Yoncheva is now the one I’d seek out, no matter what she does. (And she does most everything: This Traviata comes in the wake of both Bellini’s mighty Norma and a Handel album.)
“A few years ago, Ms. Yoncheva had an essentially slender soprano focused enough to penetrate the vast Met. Now she fills the opera house more easily, with a tone that’s simultaneously softer and stronger, less angled and more rounded. New strength in the lower reaches of her voice anchored ‘Addio del passato,’ the final-act lament of the doomed courtesan Violetta.”
Sonya Yoncheva will be releasing a new album on Sony Classical called Rebirth. She recorded project with Leonardo García Alarcón and his ensemble Cappella Mediterranea. It is scheduled for release on March 12th. The selections span five centuries ranging from Monteverdi to ABBA (and yes there is a logic to that.)
Tickets are $20 and allow screening the performance live and on demand for two weeks.
Photo: Sonya Yoncheva (Photo by Javier Del Real/Courtesy Metropolitan Opera)