In the month of August, Pretty Yende travels to Pesaro to participate in the Rossini Opera Festival, where she stars as Zoraide in Rossini’s Ricciardo e Zoraide opposite Juan Diego Flórez on August 11, 14, 17 and 20.
The rest of the cast features Sergey Romanovsky as Agorante, Nicola Ulivieri as Ircano, Victoria Yarovaya as Zomira, Xabier Anduaga as Ernesto, Sofia Mchedlishvili as Fatima, Martiniana Antonie as Elmira and Ruzil Gatin as Zamorre. Giacomo Sagripanti conducts.
Pretty Yende has been featured on this year’s “50 Badass Women” by InStyle Magazine. This is the quote included for her:
At age 16, the South African soprano traded her ambition to be an accountant for curtain calls. Now she is commanding the world’s biggest stages. “I never thought anyone who looked like me could learn [opera] and inspire other girls to do the same, but the color of my skin doesn’t matter,” she says. “The pure joy of singing and breaking boundaries while sharing it makes me the most proud.”
On July 19, Pretty Yende travels to Switzerland, where sings the Opening Concert at the Verbier Festival, with Valery Gergiev on the podium. She is joined by violinist Daniel Lozakovich and pianist George Li.
This performance will be broadcasted by Medici.tv and available on-demand until November 6, 2018. For more information click here.
The next generation of superstar musicians takes pride of place in the opening concert of Verbier Festival’s 25th anniversary edition! New music director and Verbier regular Valery Gergiev is joined by brilliant young talents: violinist Daniel Lozakovich, pianist George Li, and golden-voiced soprano Pretty Yende. The program features a winning mixture of works by Mendelssohn, Bernstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Saint-Saëns.
At 17, 22, and 33 years old, the soloists of this evening’s concert are some of the classical music scene’s most recent revelations. The Verbier Festival has made a tradition of bringing international celebrities and young prodigies together to perform side by side, and this opening concert confirms that 2018 will be no different!
The young Daniel Lozakovich presents one of Saint-Saëns’s most beautiful compositions, the Introduction et Rondo capriccioso in A Minor, which was initially conceived as the final movement of a violin concerto for the great Pablo de Sarasate. George Li brings all of his impressive technique to Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a feverish work dedicated to Delphine von Schauroth, a pianist and composer with whom he was in love for a time. Finally, Pretty Yende honors the creator of West Side Story by performing selections from Candide, Leonard Bernstein’s operetta inspired by Voltaire’s satirical novel of the same name. Rimsky-Korsakov’s spellbinding Scheherazade and the Symphonic Diptych of longtime Verbier Festival-friend Rodion Shchedrin complete this action-packed opening to a particularly thrilling month in the Swiss Alps.
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On June 5, Pretty Yende travels to New York where she sings a concert in Carnegie Hall, making her debut at the world-renowned venue. She sings Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate and the soprano solo in Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.
She then travels to London to sing at the Classic BRIT Awards on June 13, which returns after a five year hiatus. Hosts Myleene Klass and Alexander Armstrong will celebrate the growing appeal of classical music from film, television, theatre and games, introducing performances from two of Britain’s best loved entertainers Ball & Boe, Andrea Bocelli, Welsh bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel and winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2017, Tokio Myers, among others.
On June 21 and 22, she sings two Midsummer Night’s Galas in Grafenegg with Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja and Dutch cellist Harriet Krijgh, with the Tonkunstler Orchestra and conductor Yutaka Sado.
A DVD of the Gala will be released as a co-production of the ORF and UNITEL CLASSICA in cooperation with the Grafenegg Festival (EuroArts Music International).
The performance of L’Elisir d’Amore that was featured in movie theaters now premieres on PBS on April 29, at 12:00pm EST. Check your local PBS stations for different time zones.
The cast includes Pretty Yende as Adina, Matthew Polenzani as Nemorino, Davide Luciano as Belcore
and Ildebrando D’Arcangelo as Dulcamara.
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For five performances from April 25 until May 10, Pretty Yende stars as Lucia di Lammermoor in Donizetti’s beloved bel canto opera, for the first time in New York. She has already sung the role at the Opéra Bastille and Deutsche Oper Berlin. Of her German performances, Bachtrack stated “her lines were clean, her breath long and ample, and she was truly delightful while being technically solid.”
At the Metropolitan Opera she shares the stage with Michael Fabiano, who sings Edgardo, Lucia’s star-crossed lover, and Quinn Kelsey as Enrico, Lucia’s brother, who drives her to her tragic end. For more information and tickets, click here.
The May 2 performance is the last radio broadcast of the 17/18 Metropolitan Opera season. Don’t miss the LIVE broadcast onMet Opera Radio.
Watch an excerpt from her performance at Opéra Bastille below:
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