Faculty artists Cyndia Sieden, soprano, and Rhonda Kline, piano, present a concert of music by Saint-Saens, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Lee Hoiby, including Schoenberg's "Cabaret Songs and Hoiby's "Jabberwocky."
Aimons-nous .......................................................................... Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
La Coccinelle
L’Attente
Ständchen ............................................................................................................. Richard Strauss Morgen (1864-1949)
Amor Die Nacht
Schlagende Herzen
INTERMISSION
Always It’s Spring ........................................................................................................... Lee Hoiby (1926-2011)
What If
Jabberwocky
Galathea .......................................................................................................... Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Gigerlette
Mahnung
Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien
Artist Bios
Cyndia Sieden, soprano
American soprano Cyndia Sieden moves easily among the Baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary repertoires to worldwide acclaim. In addition, her performances and recordings of his works affirm her status as one of the sovereign Mozart interpreters of the present day.
Highlights of 2011 included performances in Morton Feldman's monodrama Neither for New York City Opera, Ariadne in Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos at the Netherlands Opera and Soprano I in Luigi Nono's Prometeo at the Salzburg and Berlin Festivals. In contrast to these knotty modern works, she returned to Blondchen in Mozart's Abduction with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and on tour throughout Holland.
Sieden has starred at most of the world's great opera houses, including the Munich Bayerische Staatsoper, the New York Met, Paris's Opéra Bastille, the Wiener Staatsoper, Barcelona's Gran Teatre de Liceu, Brussels's La Monnaie, and London's Covent Garden and English National, as well as in Beijing and Australia. Her highly-praised Metropolitan Opera debut was as Berg's Lulu, and her success quickly led to reengagement in 2008 for Die Zauberflöte's Queen of the Night, one of her signature roles.
She is a brilliantly idiomatic interpreter of the works of Richard Strauss. She frequently performs Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (Munich, Japan, Vienna), as well as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (Paris Châtelet) and Aminta in Die schweigsame Frau (Palermo and Munich).
Her performances in the high-flying role of Ariel in the premiere of Thomas Adès's The Tempest at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ignited rave reviews and an astonished public. She has garnered equal enthusiasm and devotion for her Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, all over the world. Other specialties are Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and the operas of Handel.
Sieden is much in demand for Orff's Carmina Burana, the oratorios and masses of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn, and works of Bach, Strauss and Mahler. She has sung with many of the most renowned symphony orchestras in the world, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival. In addition, her Lieder recitals are always highly-anticipated events.
Cyndia Sieden was born in California, USA, and received her first vocal instruction there. The significant milestone in her studies was work with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in master classes in Carmel Valley, CA in 1982. Schwarzkopf then invited Sieden to become her private student, and also to work with her in master classes at the 1983 Salzburg Mozarteum. Sieden sang in the culminating concert/competition and won first place, the springboard for her first professional engagements.
In 1984, Cyndia Sieden made her European debut in Il Barbiere at the Bavarian State Opera; her American debut also took place in 1984, in La Fille du Regiment, in Tampa, Florida.
Rhonda Kline, piano
Rhonda Kline is Artist-in-Residence and Director of Accompanying at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle. An accomplished and versatile pianist cited as a “tour de force at the piano” (Klarinet), Rhonda has performed with a variety of artists in Europe and the United States. Recent performance highlights have included concerts with the Sacred Music Foundation of Seattle, a European tour with Metropolitan Opera soprano Joyce Guyer, a chamber recital with Slovenian clarinetist Joze Kotar, cabaret performances with Black Box Opera Theater at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival, and a gala concert with Opera on Tap of Seattle. She recently joined baritone Victor Benedetti and soprano Juliana Rambaldi in a weeklong residency at the American University of Sharjah near Dubai, presenting a recital and masterclass to voice students. In addition, Rhonda was featured accompanying soprano Mimmi Fulmer on a CD entitled “Voyage Home: Songs of Finland, Sweden and Norway”, which was released by Centaur Records in 2013.
Passionate about fostering both the young emerging professional and veteran performer, Rhonda serves as general manager and music director for Northwest Opera In Schools, Etc. (N.O.I.S.E., www.noiseforkids.org), an opera education program which performs live adaptations of operas for K-6th grade students in Washington state. Summer months find her in Italy, where she is a pianist and coach with Canta in Italia, a program for singers to study opera along with Italian language and culture. Her operatic coaching repertoire includes more than 50 titles, including traditional operas, contemporary works, and musical theater.