[394]MTSU PRESENTS APRIL 20 OPERA GALA CONCERT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 14, 2008
CONTACT: Tim Musselman, (615) 898-2493

MTSU PRESENTS APRIL 20 OPERA GALA CONCERT
Free Concert Features Faculty Tenor H. Stephen Smith

(MURFREESBORO)—The MTSU Symphony, Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonia, featuring MTSU faculty tenor, H. Stephen Smith, will present their season’s finale concert titled Opera Gala Concert at 4 p.m. April 20 in the T. Earl Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building on the MTSU campus.
In addition to featuring Smith, the gala will feature MTSU voice majors Emily Kent (soprano) and Nathan Rodriquez (baritone) in opera arias by Puccini, Donizetti and Mozart and the famous duet from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers.
“These arias and the incomparable Pearl Fishers duet are some of the most magically beautiful moments ever written in opera,” said Carol Nies, music director of the MTSU Symphony and Chamber Orchestra.
MTSU music majors will also be featured as soloists with the Chamber Orchestra. Sean Donovan and Hannah Tilton will perform the Haydn Concerto for Two Horns and Evan Barker, the Larsson Viola Concertino. The Symphony will also perform Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and works by de Falla and Verdi.
Featured singer Smith has performed leading roles on numerous opera stages with artists such as Renée Fleming, June Anderson, Elisabeth Söderstrom, Hillevi Martinpelto, Katarina Dalayman, and Tom Krause, to name a few, and while residing in Stockholm, Sweden from 1989-98, studied privately with Nicolai Gedda.
Smith made his tenor debut with the Pittsburgh Opera Theater singing the role of Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly. Over the past several years he has performed numerous leading tenor roles with opera houses in Scandinavia as well as in Switzerland, Poland, Britain and Portugal. His operatic work in America includes his performing with opera companies in New Orleans, San Francisco, Houston, Mobile, Tulsa, Sacramento, Austin, Augusta, Jacksonville, Sarasota, Chattanooga, Norfolk, Shreveport, Columbus, Boston, Nashville and New York.
This concert is free and open to the public.
For more information on this and other events in the MTSU School of Music, please visit www.mtsumusic.com or call 615-898-4293.


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ATTENTON, MEDIA: For a jpeg of H. Stephen Smith, please e-mail Tim Musselman at tmusselm@mtsu.edu.