Opera Star Susan Graham to Sing at CSUN

Musical America’s 2004 Vocalist of the Year, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, will perform Jan. 18 at CSUN’s Valley Performing Arts Center. 

Her program will be selected from works by Duparc, Horowitz, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, Purcell, Schubert, Schumann, Sondheim, Wolf and Noel Coward.

This dynamic mezzo has sung on the great stages of the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, the Royal Opera House, the Paris National Opera and the Vienna State Opera. 

As a soloist, she has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia orchestra and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, to name just a few. She has appeared in recital in Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S.

A delegate for UNESCO, she performed at the second inauguration of George W. Bush, singing Bless This House.

Graham’s complete set of opera recordings range from Alcina by George Frederic Handel through American composer Samuel Barber’s Vanessa to Dead Man Walking by the young Floridian composer Jake Heggie.

She also is an expert in French music. A few years ago saw the release of two recordings: with pianist Malcolm Martineau a survey of 100 years of French songs; and with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic her magnificent interpretation of Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopatre. Grammophone described her Dido in Berlioz’s Les Troyens as “moving and intense … strongly acted and magnificently sung.” Graham’s accomplishment in the field of French music earned her the honor of the title “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” given by the government of France. 

Her earlier solo albums include another work by Berlioz, as well as those of Ravel, Chausson and Charles Ives. It was for the Ives songs that she won a Grammy. 

Graham is spearheading the international revival of the operas of Christoph Wilibald Gluck. A new production of Iphigénie in Tauride, in which she sang the title role, was staged for her by the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera and Covent Garden.

Originally from New Mexico and Texas, Graham attended Texas Tech University and did her graduate work at the Manhattan School of Music, from which she received an honorary doctor of music in 2008.

Susan Graham at CSUN’s Valley Performing Arts Center, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge; Jan. 18 at 8 p.m. For tickets and information, click here.