This Saturday night, the Fairfield County Chorale will host two stars of the Metropolitan Opera in a program at the Norwalk Concert Hall. WSHU’s Eda Uzunlar spoke with Music Director David Rosenmeyer about the concert with Kathryn Lewek and Zach Borichevsky.
WSHU: I was so excited to learn about this event and to see some of the names that are a part of it. It's honestly incredible, what's happening this Saturday with two incredible performers Kathryn Lewek and Zach Borichevsky. How do you pick pieces for an event like this?
David Rosenmeyer: This was both the most fun part and incredibly challenging, because there is so much and the parameters were basically what Katie and Zach wanted to do. That's the beginning. And then it was what are we able to do? That is in terms of difficulty, limits such as orchestration, and everything. Once, we were in conversations, and I was throwing some ideas like, 'Oh, maybe we can do this, maybe we could do that.' Everything was so much fun, and finding contrasts, so not everything is in the same tone, so something else is more exciting, something is more moving, something is more inspiring.
So we had to include a couple of hits and two choruses by Verdi, who may be the greatest opera composer, right? And one is the famous Va Pensiero. It's such a famous and inspiring, beautiful, and heartfelt song, and it has become recognized as Italy's unofficial national anthem in a way. The lyrics are paraphrasing verses from Psalms, and it's about yearning for, for a homeland, And immediately, or two numbers after that, we have the chorus of the gypsies from Il Trovatore. Basically, they are saying, let's drink, and then they join Zach in another chorus, saying, To arms! To arms! Let's go kill everybody, and I'm very happy to be dead if I am dead next to you!
WSHU: I also love that it sounds like it was a collaboration with the performers. Speaking of them, both of these performers have been on stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Kathryn Lewek, especially, is just a total star of space. Can you describe what it might be like to see these two perform in such an intimate setting compared to, for example, the Metropolitan Opera?
DR: So, first of all, you're going to see more of them, right? Because, I mean, Katie Lewek is the queen of the queens of the night. I think she has already surpassed the previous person who held the record of most queens performing at the Met, and she does it worldwide. But you see her for maybe 12 minutes on stage. She has two arias, and they are the most spectacular thing. She does one of them in a wheelchair. It's incredible, with one of the best orchestras in the world.
But if you come to see her in our concert, you see her in the front of the stage with a light for herself, with the orchestra to her back, beautifully dressed, with Zach near her. Both of them perform aria after aria, duet after duet, and you feel the intensity of the singing coming from the stage.
And I have to say, with our chorus, we do mostly oratorial stuff and masses and stuff like that, which we love, but this concert is more fun and, at the same time, inspiring and poignant and all of those things. And just to see them from up close, not in the context of costumes, but to see him look nicely in a beautiful tux, that is very exciting.
EU: David, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and it sounds like this performance as well as being obviously poignant and emotional, will also be fun, that's an evolution too of what opera can look like.
For more information, go to fairfieldcountychorale.org.
