Faculty recital to celebrate music of opera diva
Marcella Sembrich
Artist-in-residence Sylvia Stoner will present In the Shadow of Sembrich, an evening of art song to celebrate the song recitals of legendary opera diva Marcella Sembrich, at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, in the Arthur Zankel Music Center.
Pianist Carol Ann Elze-Sussdorff will accompany Stoner. Admission is free and open to the public. The three-part program features music regularly performed by Sembrich, including old airs and songs by Handel, Mozart and Beethoven; classical German lieder by Schubert, Brahms, and Schumann; and modern songs and folk songs by Bizet, Strauss, and Poulenc, among others. The program draws on a July presentation at the Sembrich studio by Stoner, in which she revisited the repertoire of Sembrich’s song recitals and performed a sampling of the programs “that set a new standard of excellence for generations for follow,” according to the Sembrich studio’s program notes.
Sembrich, whose former teaching studio is located in Bolton Landing, N.Y., founded the vocal departments at the Juilliard School in New York City and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She was one of the first famous opera singers to bring the European art song tradition to the United States.
Stoner, a 1994 Skidmore graduate, was a Filene Scholar who majored in performance. She was not a fan of opera until she took a Liberal Studies course with Professor Tom Denny, and studied The Marriage of Figaro. “I fell in love with opera at that point,” said Stoner.
She obtained her doctorate of musical arts degree with honors in vocal performance at the University of Kansas.
Stoner has performed across the country in opera and theater. Her regional opera credits include the Des Moines Metro Opera, Shreveport Opera, Opera Omaha, the Lake George Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and the Kansas City Puccini Festival. She has performed various chamber works, contemporary classical, and early music. She most recently was the soprano soloist in Haydn’s Creation with the Battenkill Chorale.
She was the regional winner of the National Council Auditions for the Metropolitan Opera, and a finalist in the Marcella Sembrich competition, the Naftzger and NATS competitions.
Elze-Sussdorff, a graduate of the Crane School of Music, has served as music director and conductor of the Glens Falls Symphony Children’s Chorus since 2009, and has been the accompanist for the Adirondack Voices since 1999. She most recently served as music instructor at St. Mary’s-St. Alphonsus School in Glens Falls.
