Susana Poretsky
Lecturer
Voice
Music Building #1222
sporetsky@music.ucsb.edu
susana@susanaporetsky.com
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle for having a voice of “extraordinary passion and power” and her “grand but emotionally transparent” characterizations, Susana Poretsky’s 2006-07 season includes her first performances of Margret in Wozzeck with San Diego Opera, where she will return in coming seasons as Fenena in Nabucco. She also rejoins the New York City Ballet as the soloist in Alexei Ratmansky’s Diamond Project, a work she premiered in the 2005-06 season and returns to the Metropolitan Opera for Die Ägyptische Helena.
Following a triumph at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition in 1998, she was invited to sing a gala concert with the tenor in Japan. She most recently renewed her contact with Mr. Domingo when he engaged her to sing Suzuki in Madama Butterfly with Los Angeles Opera in 2004. Among the mezzo-soprano’s other recent engagements in American are Pauline in Pique Dame with both Los Angeles Opera and Washington National Opera, the title role in Carmen with the Fort Worth Opera, and concert performances of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Mlada with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. In previous seasons, she has been heard on the Metropolitan Opera stage as Maddalena in Rigoletto, Dryade in Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as in productions of Otello, Pique Dame, and Eugene Onegin. She has also been a frequent guest of the Opera Orchestra of New York since her American debut with the organization, having sung with Eve Queler in five different concert opera productions at Carnegie Hall.
In Europe, Ms. Poretsky was recently heard in performances of Francesca Zambello's production of Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the Paris Opera (released on DVD), as Adalgisa in Norma and Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Fenena in Nabucco at the Arena di Verona, and the title role in Bizet’s Carmen with Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels under the baton of Antonio Pappano, after already having sung the same role in Japan and in South Africa. She made her her La Scala debut in Ariadne auf Naxos under Giuseppe Sinopoli’s baton and at the Mannheim National Theater as Marina Mnishek in Boris Godunov. Her additional operatic credits include Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at Italy’s Liguria Summer Festival in Italy, Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with the Rome Opera, and Adalgisa in Norma with the New Israeli Opera.
Also active on the concert stage, Ms. Poretsky has appeared with every major orchestra in Israel, performing most frequently with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Zubin Mehta. She was invited to sing Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony for the composer and conductor’s 75th Anniversary and sang the same piece for her New York Philharmonic debut under the baton of Kurt Masur as well as L'Orchestre de Paris. She also recently sang Mozart's Requiem at the Teatro San Carlo in Napoli, Mozart's Mass in c-minor, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova, Verdi's Requiem at the Liguria Festival, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the Golda Meir Performing Center in Tel-Aviv.
