SOPRANO
Erika Baikoff
"The wonderful Erika Baikoff brought relief to the Mahler landscape in the last movement sublimely introduced by the harp and the clarinet. With a pure and very expressive voice, both in the music and in the text, the Russian-American soprano envelops in a fragile but transparent case the paradise described in this wonderful music."
Russian American Soprano, Erika Baikoff, is a recent graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. As a Lindemann Young Artist, she sang the roles of Xenia in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Barbarina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. At Maestro Nézet-Séguin's invitation, she joined the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra's tour of Das Rheingold and was featured as the soprano soloist in Mahler's 4th Symphony with Maestro Rustioni and the Ulster Orchestra. Equally passionate about chamber music, she made her debuts with Schubertíada and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, both of which she will return to in future seasons. The 2023/2024 season includes debuts with the Houston Grand Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, and Ciclo de Lied.
In 2022, she joined the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra's European tour of Das Rheingold and was featured as the soprano soloist in Mahler's 4th Symphony with the Ulster Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Daniele Rustioni. The 21/22 season also included debuts with Schubertìada in Spain and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, both of which she will return to this season.
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Oscar
Un Ballo in Maschera
January 26th
2025
A governor, his friend, the friend's wife. A love triangle straight out of a romance novel. The soprano between the tenor and the baritone. But, in Verdi's Ballo in maschera all the protagonists are two-faced. Riccardo, the governor, is lauded as a just sovereign, yet shirks responsibility and seeks refuge from tedium in all manner of distractions - the ultimate kick for a man such as he can only be to risk his own life.
Renato loves his friend Riccardo almost more than his wife; and she, Amelia, wants not only to eradicate all feelings for Riccardo, but, if possible, even more. Ulrica, the fortune teller, is the shadowy influence who evokes in people an irresistible pull towards death - until the culmination of the dance on the volcano in a deadly masked ball. Composed in 1858 for Naples, the opera was not allowed to be performed there for reasons of censorship. After radical editing, the premiere finally took place in Rome and to this day remains one of the most performed, but also most mysterious of Verdi's works.
