Speranza Scappucci Conducts the Juilliard Orchestra in Works by Verdi, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn for Juilliard's Commencement Concert on Thursday, May 17, 2018, at 6pm in Alice Tully Hall

NEW YORK –– Speranza Scappucci returns to her alma mater to conduct the Juilliard Orchestra on Thursday, May 17, 2018, at 6pm in Alice Tully Hall for the school’s annual commencement concert. The program features Verdi’s Overture to La forza del destino; Beethoven’s Ah, Perfido! with Juilliard soprano Felicia Moore; and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, “Italian.” The orchestra includes Juilliard’s graduating class of instrumentalists and the concert is attended by family members and friends, many of whom are in New York City for Juilliard’s 113th Commencement Ceremony the following morning, Friday, May 18, 2018, at 11am in Alice Tully Hall.

The concert and its early start time are part of a special evening that includes a private dinner hosted by Juilliard for the distinguished recipients of the school’s honorary doctorates to be awarded at the following morning’s ceremony. This year’s honorees include opera singer Grace Bumbry; bassist and former Juilliard faculty member Ron Carter; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Lynn Nottage; Ballet Hispánico founder Tina Ramirez; and Ann Ziff, philanthropist and chairman of the Metropolitan Opera. The commencement speaker will be trumpet alumnus Wynton Marsalis, director of Juilliard Jazz Studies, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Extremely limited tickets for the Juilliard Orchestra Commencement Concert are available in person only at the Juilliard Box Office. For more information, go to juilliard.edu/calendar.

About Speranza Scappucci

Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci is a graduate of Juilliard, where she studied piano and collaborative piano and Rome’s Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia. This season she began her tenure as principal conductor of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège with Manon Lescaut and Carmen, made her Lincoln Center White Light Festival debut conducting the New York premiere of choreographer and Juilliard alumna Jessica Lang’s Stabat Mater, and toured with Orchestra Toscanini in Parma. Upcoming performances include debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Luzern Symphony, Orchestra Verdi at MiTo Festival, and San Diego Symphony.

Her recent and upcoming operatic performances include La bohème, La traviata, La Cenerentola, and Don Pasquale at the Vienna State Opera; La fille du régiment and La bohème in Zurich; a debut in Toronto with the Canadian Opera Company leading Il barbiere di Siviglia; Attila at Barcelona’s Liceu; Aida and I Puritani with Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège; La sonnambula and a new production of Così fan tutte with the Rome Opera; Il Turco in Italia in Pesaro at the Rossini Opera Festival; L’elisir d’amore at the Music Academy of the West; a concert version of La sonnambula in a co-presentation of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program and Juilliard Opera; La bohème at the Los Angeles Opera; La Cenerentola and Tosca at the Washington Opera; La Cenerentola and Le nozze di Figaro at Turin’s Teatro Regio; a new production of La fille du regiment at the Santa Fe Opera; Norma in Lisbon at the Teatro Sao Carlos; and La Traviata at the Macerata Opera Festival.

Equally at home in symphonic repertoire, Ms. Scappucci has conducted the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Netherlands Radio Orchestra, Orchestra Teatro Lirico Cagliari, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestra Regionale della Toscana, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Harusai Festival Orchestra, and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. She has also led gala concerts at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and Théâtre des Champs-Élysée in Paris.

Her discography includes a disc of Mozart arias with soprano Marina Rebeka and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra album on Warner Classics and a CD with tenor Saimir Pirgu and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino on Opus Arte.

About Felicia Moore

Soprano Felicia Moore is an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies candidate at Juilliard studying with Edith Wiens. Ms. Moore was most recently heard as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Opera Columbus. Last summer in the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program she sang Agathe in Der Freischütz and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser. Last season she sang the title role of Katya Kabanova with Juilliard Opera. Ms. Moore has been a young artist at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Des Moines Metro Opera, where she was the cover for Alice Ford in Falstaff, the title role of alumnus Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, and Madame Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites. She is a winner of this year’s Sullivan Foundation Award; her previous awards include being a two-time semi-finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, as well as being awarded the top prize from the George London Foundation. Ms. Moore, who is from Princeton, N.J., holds a Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and she is supported by the Hardesty and Beverley Peck Johnson Fund.

# # #

Program Listing:

Thursday, May 17, 2018, 6pm, Alice Tully Hall

Juilliard Orchestra

Speranza Scappucci, conductor

Felicia Moore, soprano

 

Giuseppi VERDI Overture to La forza del destino

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Ah, Perfido!

Felix MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4 in A Major, “Italian”

 

Extremely limited tickets for the Juilliard Orchestra Commencement Concert are available in person only at the Juilliard Box Office. For more information, go to juilliard.edu/calendar.