MSM Junior Opera Theater:
Harmony in Solitude
MAY 13 | WED
8:30 PM (EST)
Catherine Malfitano, Video Concept Creator and Director
Chun-Wei Kang, Music Director and Pianist
Join us “Live on Tape” for a very special evening bringing together 18 students of Catherine Malfitano’s Junior Opera Theater Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music, featuring solo performances by each student, recorded from their homes all around the world.
About the Program
In the first half of the program, the artists perform a French song or aria, and in the second half, each sings a composition from their country of origin, representing each student’s homeland and family heritage.
These songs represent each student’s roots and culture, and range from traditional and art songs, to pop songs and spirituals — with a special closing song performed as an ensemble.
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Junior Opera Theater performers
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Concert Program Details
“Voices of Hope”
“We are celebrating the cultural diversity of MSM with this evening of song,” explains Catherine Malfitano. “The performances bring us together, while representing where each student is now.”
“This is a tapestry of songs for everyone. We raise our voices with hope.” she says. “Our mission with this concert is to give comfort and love through singing.”
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About Catherine Malfitano
Catherine Malfitano, singer, actor, director, and teacher, was born in New York City to a dancer/actress mother and violinist father. Her Emmy-award winning portrayal of Tosca, broadcast live from the actual Roman settings of the opera, was seen by more than one billion viewers worldwide.
Renowned as a unique music theatre performer, Ms. Malfitano has appeared at all the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Bavarian State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Berlin’s Deutsche Opera and State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, Florence’s Teatro Comunale, the San Francisco Opera, the Netherlands Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Barcelona’s Liceu, the Hamburg State Opera, and Brussels’s Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie.
Catherine Malfitano’s stage repertoire of more than 70 roles spans the entirety of operatic history. Some of her many varied roles were Monteverdi’s Poppea and Ottavia, Donizetti’s Adina and Lucia; Humperdinck’s Gretel; Beethoven’s Marzelline and Leonore; Berg’s Lulu and Marie; Mozart’s Konstanze, Susanna, Zerlina, and Donna Elvira; Rossini’s Rosina and Fiorilla; Janáček’s Katya, Emilia Marty, and Kostelnicka; Massenet’s Manon and Thais; the three heroines in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann; the three heroines in Puccini’s Il Trittico, as well as his Tosca, Cio-Cio-San, Mimì, Liù, and Minnie; Verdi’s Nannetta, Gilda, Violetta, Amelia Grimaldi, and Lady Macbeth; Poulenc’s Thérèse in Les mamelles de Tirésias and Elle in La voix humaine; Annina in Menotti’s Saint of Bleecker Street; Samuel Barber’s Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra; Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Kurt Weill’s Rose and Anna Maurrant in Street Scene, Polly in Threepenny Opera, Jenny in Mahagonny, and both Anna I and Anna II in The Seven Deadly Sins; and Wagner’s Senta and Kundry. Throughout her career, Ms. Malfitano has worked with the world’s leading conductors and stage directors.
A champion of 20th-century music, she has sung in the world premieres of Carlisle Floyd’s Bilby’s Doll; Conrad Susa’s Transformations; Thomas Pasatieri’s Washington Square, The Seagull, The Family Room, and The Martyrs; and William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, McTeague, A Wedding, and Medusa.
In the summer of 2005 Catherine Malfitano made her debut as a stage director, with a new production of Madama Butterfly for the Central City Opera. In the following seasons she also directed new productions of Poulenc’s La voix humaine for La Monnaie in Brussels, Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street and Lucia di Lammermoor, again for Central City Opera, Tosca for Florida Grand Opera, Rigoletto for Washington National, Don Giovanni for San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Tosca for English National Opera in London, Lucia for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and a new double-bill production of Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for the Canadian Opera Company.
Since 1998 Ms. Malfitano has been teaching privately, giving master classes worldwide—including her own special course, “Revealing the Actor Singer Within.” She joined the Manhattan School of Music voice faculty in the fall of 2008, where she teaches voice and acting and directs the Junior Opera Theater. It is a great honor for her to teach at MSM, the conservatory she graduated from in 1971, having performed, as an undergraduate, the following roles: Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute; Suzel in Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz; Abigail in The Crucible by Ward; and Manon Lescaut in Boulevard Solitude by Henze.
In the summer of 2019, Ms. Malfitano made a return to the stage in a very special production of Puccini’s Tosca by Christophe Honoré, at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, in the role of the Prima Donna. She sang some, and acted up a storm, in this role of the retired Diva!
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About Chun-Wei Kang
Chun-Wei Kang has performed in concerts both as soloist and ensemble performer throughout the United States, Canada, and East Asia. She has appeared on national Taiwanese television in recitals with violinist LongLong Kang, was broadcast in Japan with soprano Monique McDonald, and appeared on PBS SundayArts in a showcase for rising young opera singers. She has won several awards and scholarships, including the Gwendolyn Koldofsky Memorial Award for “a musician who demonstrated outstanding professionalism in collaborative piano.” Ms. Kang has served as staff pianist in the National Music Competition in Taiwan, the Canadian Provincial Festival, the Centro Studi Italiani Opera Festival, and the International Vocal Arts Institute (New York, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Montreal).
A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music with a Master’s degree, Ms. Kang is a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, OperaWorks, BridgeMusik, and the Manhattan International Music Festival and has been the Assistant Music Director for the New Choral Society since 2008. At MSM, she served as Music Director for the Opera Role Preparation Workshop directed by legendary mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn from 2010 to 2017 and was Assistant Music Director for The Tailor of Gloucester. In addition, she was Artistic Director for Creative Voice Institute (Taiwan) and Vocal Coach Asia (Singapore) from 2016 to 2019.
Ms. Kang has appeared on many stages, including David Geffen Hall and Carnegie Hall, and has worked with internationally acclaimed masters such as Anne Epperson, Warren Jones, Nico Castel, Marilyn Horne, Paul Nadler, and Joan Dornemann.
Catherine Malfitano (in pink) and her Junior Opera students in Greenfield Hall, September 2019.
“This is a tapestry of songs for everyone, and we raise our voices in hope. Our mission with this concert is to give comfort and love through singing.”
