LINCOLN CENTER

David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic

Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Magdalena Kožená - Mezzo-Soprano

Berlioz - Les Nuits d’été
Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade

"Rimsky-Korsakov’s glittering showpiece Scheherazade transports you to the exotic time and place of The Arabian Nights. To save her life the heroine entertains her husband with nightly tales of shipwrecks, thieves, and royals. Sensuous, shimmering, and stormy — it’s a thrilling musical adventure! And Magdalena Kožená makes her Philharmonic debut singing highly perfumed songs of love and loss by Berlioz."

A video of Magdalena Kožená...

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená was born in the Czech city of Brno and studied voice and piano at the Brno Conservatory and later at Bratislava’s Academy of Performing Arts. She has worked with the world’s leading conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, James Levine, and Charles Mackerras, and she regularly appears as a soloist with the Berlin, Vienna, and Czech philharmonic orchestras and the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw orchestras. Her recital partners include Daniel Barenboim, Yefim Bronfman, and Mitsuko Uchida. Ms. Kožená’s understanding of historical performance practices has been cultivated in collaboration with period-instrument ensembles including the English Baroque Soloists, Gabrieli Consort and Players, Il Giardino Armonico, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Venice Baroque Orchestra, and Le Concert d’Astrée. She first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 2002 as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and returned in 2013 as Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo (a role she has also sung for the Glyndebourne Festival and in Berlin and Lucerne). Ms. Kožená has been a regular guest at The Metropolitan Opera since her first appearance in 2003. Other notable opera appearances include Angelina in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden (in 2007); Oktavian in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Berlin Staatsoper (2009) and Baden Baden Easter Festival (2015); the title role in Bizet’s Carmen at the Salzburg Easter and summer festivals (2012); Charpentier’s Médée at Basel Opera (2015); and Martinů’s Juliette at the Berlin Staatsoper (2016). Ms. Kožená was signed by Deutsche Grammophon in 1999 and released her first album of Bach arias on its Archiv label. Her recital debut recording of songs by Dvořák, Janáček, and Martinů appeared on Deutsche Grammophon’s yellow label in 2001 and received Gramophone’s Solo Vocal Award. Her most recent releases for Deutsche Grammophon include Monteverdi with La Cetra and Andrea Marcon (2016), Prayer for voice and organ with Christian Schmidt (2014), and Love + Longing with the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.