Song of the Day Series
Scottish-American soprano Mary Garden (1874-1967) portrayed Goethe's character Gretchen, known as Marguerite in Charles Gounod's opera Faust.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)
Gretchen am Spinnrade (Schubert/Goethe)
Graham Johnson
For SongFest 2020 participants Alexa Constantine, Sydney Dardis, Gal Kohav, & Bronwyn Schuman.
Duration: 37 minutes
About:
Hosted by Graham Johnson, The Song of the Day series is a daily meditation on the many layers and complexities contained in a single song. Each song is dedicated to one or more performers who would have taken part in SongFest this summer. Dedicatees were chosen in collaboration between our artistic Director Rosemary Ritter and the students.
Resources:
A lovely article from NPR about the beloved Gretchen am Spinnrade.
Oxford Lieder’s Translation of Gretchen am Spinnrade by Richard Stokes.
About Our Participants
Alexa Constantine
Alexa received her BA in piano performance from UCLA with summa cum laude honors. Upon graduating, she served as the organist and accompanist for the First United Methodist Church of Ventura. Alexa is currently a staff pianist at UCLA, AMDA, and Marymount High School, where she is also the orchestra teacher. She also has had the pleasure of working as the music director for Mission Opera and as the répétiteur for numerous other Los Angeles-based opera companies. Alexa plans to apply for her masters in collaborative piano this year.
Sydney Dardis
Soprano, Sydney Dardis, a native of Laguna Niguel, California, is pursuing a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Arts from The Juilliard School, where she studies with Darrell Babidge. Throughout the 2018-2019 season, Ms. Dardis was pleased to perform as Gianetta in L’elisir d’Amore at the Chautauqua Institution and covered Flora in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at The Juilliard School. Then, in Summer 2019, she returned to The Chautauqua Institution and performed as Tytania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In March of 2020, Ms. Dardis was honored to have performed in Debussy’s Nocturnes, “Sirènes” with conductor, Louis Langrée and the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall under the instruction of chorus master, Pierre Vallet.
Gal Kohav
Gal Kohav (Israel) mezzo soprano, is finishing her first year in the Maryland Opera Studio. She graduated from UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance. In 2019, Kohav performed the role of Opera Box Ghost and covered the role of Susanna in The Ghosts of Versailles at the Chautauqua Opera Company. Kohav performed the Alto solo in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky Cantata and Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the UCLA Philharmonia. She premiered two leading roles with Opera UCLA: Julek in the West Coast premiere of Janice Hamer’s Lost Childhood, and the title role in the first workshop of Carla Lucero’s Juana. She has been a first-place recipient of the Saddleback Concerto Competition, the MTAC Competition, and the SAI competition. Kohav is a recipient of the 2020 Eva & Marc Stern Fellowship at SongFest. In the 2020-2021 season of Maryland Opera Studio, Kohav will be a singing the roles of Kate Julian in Britten’s Owen Wingrave and Cavalier Ramiro in Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera.
Bronwyn Schuman
Canadian pianist Bronwyn Schuman recently graduated with her MM in Collaborative Piano at The Juilliard School under her primary teacher, Lydia Brown, as well as with Jonathan Feldman and Brian Zeger. A two-time winner of Juilliard’s Honors Recital in Alice Tully Hall, Bronwyn has also performed on WQXR’s “Midday Masterpieces,” in Juilliard’s Focus Festival, and regularly in Juilliard’s Sonatenabende and Liederabende series. Prior to her studies at Juilliard, she completed her BMus under Edwin Gnandt at Ambrose University in Calgary, where she also completed her BA in English. She has attended the Franz-Schubert-Institut (Vienna), Mountain View International Festival (Calgary), SongFest (Los Angeles), and Toronto Summer Music. Bronwyn has held the operatic coach and accompanist fellowship at the Atlantic Music Festival (Maine) and the coach and répétiteur fellowship at Aquilon Music Festival (Oregon).