Violeta Urmana will be performing at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

About the artist

Lithuanian artist Violeta Urmana is one of the most renowned opera singers working today and has an exceptionally broad opera, concert, and song repertory. She began her career appearing in dramatic mezzo-soprano roles, later switching to soprano and performing roles including Amelia (Un ballo in maschera), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Leonora (La forza del destino), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), Odabella (Attila), Isolde (Tristan und Isolde), Sieglinde (Die Walküre), Brünnhilde (Siegfried), and the title roles in La Gioconda, Médée, Aida, Tosca, Norma, La Wally, and Ariadne auf Naxos. Since 2015, she has returned to mezzo-soprano repertory, appearing in roles that include Klytämnestra (Elektra), Herodias (Salome), and the Princess (Suor Angelica).

Urmana performs regularly at leading opera houses such as La Scala, the State Opera and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin; the Teatro Real in Madrid; the Vienna State Opera; the Paris Opéra; the Metropolitan Opera; the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the BBC Proms; and the Bayreuth, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, and Edinburgh festivals.

She has worked with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Bertrand de Billy, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, James Conlon, James Levine, Jesús López Cobos, Fabio Luisi, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Simon Rattle, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Franz Welser-Möst, and Christian Thielemann.

Urmana has received the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, the Order of the Star of Italy, and an honorary doctorate from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. She is also an Austrian Kammersängerin and since 2016 a UNESCO Artist for Peace. She received the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas and the Commander’s Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for services to Lithuania.

December 13-15 she will be performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall alongside Zubin Mehta Conducting „Gurrelieder„.

About this Performance

Gurrelieder’s lush Romantic atmosphere, hyper-emotional language, endless melody, and sprawling scale bring to mind names like Wagner or Mahler. Arnold Schoenberg composed the cantata as a monument to late Romanticism before landing on his expressionist style that helped set off a musical revolution in the 20th century. Gurrelieder’s massive scale—calling for five soloists, multiple choirs, a narrator, and gargantuan orchestra—has made it a rarely performed but beloved masterpiece.

Equally rare are conductors who know how to navigate the piece, and LA Phil Conductor Emeritus Zubin Mehta is an expert in revealing the operatic emotion and architecture of Gurrelieder having conducted the LA Phil premiere, recording it multiple times, and choosing it for his final concert as NY Phil Music Director. Don’t miss this special opportunity to experience Mehta return to one of his signature pieces with the epic and poetic Gurrelieder.

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