Is Asmik Grigorian’s Cio-Cio-San the most highly anticipated Met debut this season? Her first performance on April 26^th is not scheduled for a free stream, but the second on April 30^th is.

In advance of her debut, Chris’s Cache showcases Grigorian’s versatility with broadcasts of the Lithuanian soprano in Halévy’s La Juive, Giordano’s Fedora and Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt.

Grigorian turns 43 the day after her Met Madama Butterfly HD, so she’s been performing for a good while now, but her rise to prominence began fewer than ten years ago. One might argue that her 2015 partnership with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in Rubinstein’s Demon first brought her a good deal of international attention, but the year before she’d starred in Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress at the Theater an der Wien.

One can already see the star quality in her 2009 Mrs. Lovett in a Vilnius Sweeney Todd.

No Met for Grigorian next season, but she’ll appear in recital at Zankel Hall in an all-Russian program similar to last summer’s at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

She then moves into Carnegie’s main hall for a most unusual concert with the Cleveland Orchestra in which she performs Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder followed by the finale of Puccini’s Suor Angelica.

Andrea Caré, her Fedora Loris, posted a pirate video of a section of an orchestra rehearsal of today’s Giordano performance.

One can see what a mesmerizing performer Grigorian is as I discovered for myself last fall in Hamburg.

Halévy: La Juive

Rachel: Asmik Grigorian
La Princesse Eudoxie: Nicole Chevalier
Eléazar: Roberto Saccà
Léopold: Randall Bills
Le Cardinal de Brogni: Dmytri Ulyanov

Conductor: Tomás Netopil
Vlaamse Opera, Antwerp
14 April 2015
Broadcast

Giordano: Fedora

Fedora Romazov: Asmik Grigorian
Olga Sukarev: Sofie Asplund
Loris Ipanov: Andrea Caré
De Siriex: Ola Eliasson
Boleslao Lazinski: Martin Virin
Conductor: Tobias Ringborg

Swedish Royal Opera
10 December 2016
Broadcast

Korngold: Die Tote Stadt

Marietta: Asmik Grigorian
Brigitta: Cristina Damian
Paul: Klaus Florian Vogt
Frank / Fritz: Markus Werba

Conductor: Alan Gilbert
La Scala
28 May 2019
Broadcast

Each Grigorian performance can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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