News
Michelle DeYoung Replaces Natalie Dessay as Featured Soloist with the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
May 16, 2007
New York, NY (May 16, 2007) – The Metropolitan Opera announced today that Michelle DeYoung will be the soloist for the MET Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall on May 20 at 3:00 p.m., replacing Natalie Dessay who has cancelled due to bronchitis. Met Music Director James Levine will conduct a revised program consisting of Richard Strauss’s Suite from Der Bürger als Edelmann, the “Lied der Waldtaube” (“Song of the Wood Dove”) from Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, the Overture to Thomas’s opera Mignon, Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre, and Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé by Ravel. Ms. DeYoung is the featured soloist for the selections by Schoenberg and Berlioz, which are new to the program. The pieces by Strauss, Thomas, and Ravel were already scheduled.
American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung has a long association with the Metropolitan Opera where she sang the role of the Shaman in the world premiere of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor in the recently completed 2006-07 season. Other major roles she has performed at the Met include Venus in Tannhäuser, Fricka in Das Rheingold, and Dido in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. She first joined the Met as a member of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in 1992, making her company debut on February 7, 1994, as the German Mother in Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice. She has also performed with the MET Chamber Ensemble under the direction of Maestro Levine at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall. Ms. DeYoung returns to the Met next season as Fricka in Die Walküre, conducted by Lorin Maazel, and as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, under the baton of Maestro Levine.
In addition to the Met, Ms. DeYoung has performed frequently with major opera companies in the United States and abroad, including the Bayreuth Festival, Paris Opera, Berlin State Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet, Houston Grand Opera, and Seattle Opera. She is also a frequent soloist with the world’s top orchestras and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, among many others.
Natalie Dessay returns to the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor on September 24, 2007, the opening night of the 2007-08 season. Lucia is a new production directed by Mary Zimmerman in her Met debut and conducted by Maestro Levine. Ms. Dessay also sings the title role in a new production of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment in the Met’s 2007-08 season.
Tickets for the MET Orchestra concert on May 20 are available through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800.