Thursday, May 5, 2011

Jessica Rivera inspires raves from Carnegie to California

Having sung key roles in such major works as Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar and John Adams's Doctor Atomic, soprano Jessica Rivera continues to win kudos from East Coast to West. Writing for the Financial Times, Allan Ulrich summed up the singer's allure: "California-born Jessica Rivera epitomizes the younger, post-Upshaw generation of American soprano, as much at home in Golijov, Salonen and Adams as she is in the conventional song literature and uncommonly eloquent in all of them. Match a voluptuous instrument that meets all technical challenges . . . with a formidable musical intelligence and a capacity for projecting a text that can seem both intimate and operatic and you have an artist for whom great scores may yet be composed."  

Reviewing Rivera's late March recital at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, which included the premiere of Mark Grey's Fire Angels, written especially for the event, the New York Times praised the singer's "radiant conviction" and ability to wield "her lovely voice to expressive effect." The San Francisco Chronicle, covering Rivera's April recital in Berkeley for Cal Performances, singled out her "eloquent and often brilliant accounts of songs by Schumann and Debussy," marked by both "a plush timbre" and "laser-like technical precision."  And the Plain Dealer chronicled her March debut with the Cleveland Orchestra led by Franz Welser-Möst, when she sang Mahler and Dvorak with a voice of "ravishing fullness."

Looking ahead, Rivera sings a song of the season: Britten's Spring Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano, May 19-22. The soprano voices a graver contemporary classic on May 26-29, when she joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel for Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. And June 30-July 2 at Cincinnati Opera, she returns to a role she premiered in Vienna in 2006, Kumudha in John Adams's A Flowering Tree.

For more information, visit  JessicaRivera.com, her YouTube channel, or the IMG Artists web site.

No comments:

Post a Comment