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Evans Mirageas and Opera · Evans Mirageas and the Symphony Orchestra
Partial Listing of Decca Opera Recordings
with Luciano Pavarotti recording in Milan
The thread of opera runs throughout Evans Mirageas's career. Like many other Americans, his early exposure to opera was through recordings and the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. A Detroit Opera Theater production of Boris Godunov in 1974 with Jerome Hines was his first exposure to professional live opera followed soon thereafter by regular attendance at Metropolitan Opera productions on tour in Detroit and, starting in 1980, in New York. Among his earliest opera experiences was his first visit to the Cincinnati Opera in 1978 to see Verdi's Macbeth with Sherrill Milnes in the title role.
Very soon after joining the staff of radio station WFMT, Chicago Evans produced the historic 1983 international broadcast; live from the Bayreuth Festival, of Sir Georg Solti's only appearances at the Wagner festival. The following autumn he began working with Norman Pellegrini and Lois Baum, the producers of the Lyric Opera of Chicago internationally syndicated broadcasts. For seven seasons Evans attended rehearsals and performances, recorded interviews and eventually produced the broadcasts himself. In this time he observed closely the 'golden era' of Ardis Krainik at the Lyric.
In 1989, Evans Mirageas was appointed Artistic Administrator of The Boston Symphony. Seiji Ozawa hired Evans, in part for his operatic expertise. Ozawa programmed fully staged opera and opera scenes in Symphony Hall and Tanglewood nearly every season. While in Boston, Evans cast, and supervised the production team for Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame (also recorded live for RCA), Strauss's Salome, Verdi's Falstaff and Mozart's Idomeneo with all-star casts including Mirella Freni, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Hildegard Behrens, Frederica von Stade, Frank Lopardo, Dawn Upshaw and Benjamin Luxon, among others.
with Cecilia Bartoli
When he was appointed Senior Vice-President for Artists and Repertoire of the Decca Record Company in London, England in 1994, Evans Mirageas inherited a stellar roster of opera singers and conductors under exclusive contract to the label. For the next seven years he supervised opera recordings conducted by Sir Georg Solti, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Riccardo Chailly and others with singers Luciano Pavarotti, Cecilia Bartoli, Bryn Terfel, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Placido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Ben Heppner, René Pape, Karita Mattila, Barbara Bonney and more. A partial listing follows.
Since 2000 Evans Mirageas has been an independent consultant and in this time has cast opera productions for Semyon Bychkov, the Music Director of the WDR Cologne. Many of these concert productions have been recorded for commercial release including Strauss's Daphne with Renée Fleming (October 2005 release on Decca) and Strauss's Elektra with Deborah Polaski (fall 2005 release on Hänssler). Other upcoming presentations include Verdi's Otello with Johan Botha and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde with Botha as Tristan and Violeta Urmana as Isolde.
For the Milwaukee Symphony he developed a concert performance production of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel with Susanne Mentzer and Heidi Grant Murphy in the title roles. It was nationally broadcast by NPR and is now commercially available on AVIE. It is the first English-language recording of the work in nearly fifty years.
In his work as Artistic Advisor to The Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Brooklyn Academy of Music he has cast productions of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte (Jonathan Miller, dir.) Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer and the upcoming revival of the staged version (Jonathan Miller, dir.) of the Bach St. Matthew Passion.
In autumn 2004 Evans Mirageas was engaged by The Los Angeles Opera and The Lincoln Center Festival to serve as casting director for the new Eliot Goldenthal/Julie Taymor opera Grendel, due for its world premiere production in summer 2006 in Los Angeles and New York.
For The Handel and Haydn Society in Boston he is assisting in the development of an exciting multi-year project of the three Monteverdi operas and the 1610 Vespers, to be co-produced by The Handel and Haydn Society and the English National Opera with the celebrated Chinese director Chen Zhi-Zhang. The first opera to be produced in the cycle - Orfeo - will premiere in autumn 2006 in London and then Boston.
In January, 2005, Cincinnati Opera engaged Evans Mirageas as Artistic Advisor to assist in the planning of the 2006 and 2007 seasons while the search was underway for a new Artistic Director of the Company. In July, 2005 he accepted the invitation to become Artistic Director of the Cincinnati Opera and began his tenure in September 2005.
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