Met Stars Live in Concert presents

Three Divas

Live: Saturday, May 22 at 1:00pm ET

Three dynamic divas unite at one of Europe’s cultural landmarks. Sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra join forces with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, as well as pianist Vlad Iftinca and guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, for a program of favorite arias and scenes, transmitted live from the Royal Opera of Versailles in France.

This event is presented in association with the Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles, whose glorious 250-year-old theater, inaugurated for Marie Antoinette’s royal wedding, will be the venue for the performance.

The Program

“Je veux vivre dans ce rêve”
From Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette

“Voi che sapete”
From Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro

“Ebben? Ne andrò lontana”
From Catalani’s La Wally

“Crudele? … Non mi dir”
From Mozart’s Don Giovanni

“Agitata da due venti”
From Vivaldi’s Griselda

“Stridono lassù”
From Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci

“Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour” (Barcarolle)
From Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann

“Prenderò quel brunettino”
From Mozart’s Così fan tutte

“Mira, o Norma … Sì, fino all’ore estreme”
From Bellini’s Norma

“Marie Theres’! … Hab’ mir’s gelobt”
From R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier

“Près des remparts de Séville” (Seguidilla)
From Bizet’s Carmen

“Melodia Sentimental”
By Heitor Villa-Lobos

“Abôio”
By Ernani Braga

“En medio a mis colores” (Canzonetta spagnuola)
By Gioachino Rossini

“Me llaman la primorosa”
From Giménez’s El Barbero de Sevilla

“Estrellita”
By Manuel Ponce

“Bésame Mucho”
By Consuelo Velázquez

“Cielito Lindo”
By Quirino Mendoza y Cortés

About the Artists

Chicago-born soprano Ailyn Pérez has quickly become one of the most in-demand artists performing today. The 2016 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman, she made her debut with the company in 2015 as Micaëla in Carmen and has since given memorable portrayals of Mimì and Musetta in La Bohème, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, and the title role of Thaïs. She also participated in the celebrated At-Home Gala in April 2020 and will return during the 2021–­22 season to make her role debut as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin. In recent years, she has sung Magda in La Rondine in Naples and Florence, the title role of Manon at the Vienna State Opera, Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Paris Opera, Nedda in Pagliacci at Dutch National Opera, and Violetta in La Traviata at the Bavarian State Opera, Paris Opera, Staatsoper Berlin, and in Zurich. She has also appeared at Covent Garden, Houston Grand Opera, La Scala, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Santa Fe Opera, and in 2015, she starred as Tatyana Bakst in the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Great Scott at the Dallas Opera. In 2012, she was honored with the prestigious Richard Tucker Award.

Soprano Nadine Sierra first wowed Met audiences in 2009, winning the National Council Auditions when she was just 20 years old. She made her eagerly anticipated company debut six years later as Gilda in Rigoletto, one of her signature roles, and has also given memorable performances as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Ilia in Idomeneo, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. She was the 2018 recipient of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman, and during the 2021–22 season, she will headline her first new-production premiere with the company, taking on the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor in Simon Stone’s debut staging. Most recently, she has sung Musetta in La Bohème in Las Palmas, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette in Bordeaux and at San Francisco Opera, and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier and Nannetta in Falstaff at Staatsoper Berlin. The 2017 Richard Tucker Award winner, she has also appeared in Orange, Naples, Venice, Palermo, Zurich, and Rome, and at La Scala, Seattle Opera, Atlanta Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Hawaii Opera Theatre, among others.

Since making her 2007 debut as Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette, New York–born mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has been one of the Met’s most treasured artists. She was the 2011 recipient of the Beverly Sills Artist Award, established by Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman, and has appeared with the company in nearly 150 performances, singing Blanche de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande, the title role of Nico Muhly’s Marnie, Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Charlotte in Werther, Rosina in The Barber of Seville and Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Dorabella in Così fan tutte, and Miranda in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest. She has appeared in six Live in HD transmissions and joined Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Met Orchestra for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 2019, and during the 2021–22 season, she will make role debuts as the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos and the title role of Massenet’s Cinderella, the latter in a new abridged English-language version. A three-time Grammy Award winner and recipient of the 2013 Richard Tucker Award, she has also appeared at Dutch National Opera, Covent Garden, Washington National Opera, Palm Beach Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Opera Philadelphia, the Bavarian State Opera, Paris Opera, Salzburg Festival, Glyndebourne Festival, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. She starred as Ada Monroe in the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera in 2015.

Pianist and conductor Vlad Iftinca is currently part of the 2020–21 Staatsoper Stuttgart music staff and also music director of that company’s Opera Studio. Between 2007 and 2019, he served on the Metropolitan Opera music staff, and from 2007 to 2014, he was staff coach for the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He has also held music staff positions at Rome Opera, LA Opera, Dallas Opera, and Portugal’s Cantofest and has conducted performances of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, and Trouble in Tahiti in Stuttgart. He has collaborated in recital with generations of distinguished artists, including Thomas Hampson, Hei-Kyung Hong, Isabel Leonard, Erin Morley, Luca Pisaroni, Lisette Oropesa, Regina Resnik, Kiri Te Kanawa, Elza van den Heever, and Deborah Voigt, and has appeared on the stages of Oper Frankfurt, Opernhaus Zürich, Munich’s Max-Joseph-Saal, Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Soirées Musicales d’Arles, Beijing Music Festival, Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, LA Opera, Seoul Performing Arts Center, Hong Kong Arts Festival, and Ravinia Festival. He can be heard alongside Lisette Oropesa in her first commercially released recording, Within / Without.

Guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas has been acclaimed by the international press as the successor of Andrés Segovia and an ambassador of Spanish culture in the world. He is known for his passionate, emotive, and open-hearted playing, whether he is performing in intimate recital halls or playing to an audience of over 85,000 at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. Sáinz-Villegas has appeared on some of the world’s most prominent stages, including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. He has performed in more than 40 countries and with orchestras such as the Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and National Orchestra of Spain. Hailed as “the global ambassador of Spanish guitar” by Billboard magazine, he is a passionate promoter of the development of new repertoire and has given numerous world premieres, including the first composition for guitar by five-time Academy Award–winner John Williams. As an educator and philanthropist, Sáinz-Villegas has reached more than 35,000 children and youth through his non-profit The Music Without Borders Legacy, and through his numerous artist-in-residence collaborations with orchestras and festivals around the world.

https://www.metopera.org

Met Stars Live in Concert
Opera’s greatest stars perform in a groundbreaking new series of pay-per-view recitals in striking locations around the globe, each live via satellite and shot with multiple cameras. While the Metropolitan Opera House remains dark because of the ongoing health crisis, Met Stars Live in Concert will allow audiences to experience extraordinary solo and duo performances by top singers—streamed live online—from such locations as a former abbey in Bavaria, a Norwegian castle, an outdoor terrace on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, a church in Wales, and a historic mansion in Washington, D.C. The series marries the intimacy of the Met’s virtual At-Home Gala with the high production value of the company’s Live in HD series of cinema transmissions.

Tickets for each recital are $20, and the performances will remain available on demand for 14 days.