Isola Jones
(southmountaincc.edu)
(southmountaincc.edu)
John Malveaux of
writes:
Isola Jones sang at the Met for 16 seasons and more than 500 performances. See.http://operafresh.blogspot.com/2011/08/reflections-on-career-isola jones.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg66XM-0G_I
Isola
Jones was born December 27, 1949. The mezzo-soprano of American Indian
and African American descent started singing at 4-years old. By age 11,
while attending a Roman Catholic grade school, she saw a performance of
Leontyne Price on television and begged her mother to buy a recording of
the soprano. It was at this moment that she determined she wanted to be
an opera singer as a career. She attended Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois, to receive her undergraduate degree. After school
she became a member of the Chicago Symphony Chorus. She made her
professional debut in 1975 as the mezzo-soprano soloist in Verdi's Requiem with the Chicago Symphony as a last-minute replacement
for
Yvonne Minton, who had taken ill. The conductor was Sir Georg Solti and
the soprano soloist was none other than her idol Leontyne Price. The
subsequent year she was engaged to sing in Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer in Chicago with Solti and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
with Loren Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra. Within two years of her
professional debut, she was headed to New York City for one of the
greatest professional relationships of her operatic career: The
Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Jones made her MET debut on October 15, 1977, as
Olga in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin with fellow castmates
Nicolai Gedda, Sherrill Milnes, Teresa Zylis-Gara and conductor James
Levine in the company's first performance of the opera in Russian.
"During the intermission between the first and second acts, I remember
going back to the dressing room and looking in the mirror, and I was
visibly shaking. I thought, 'I cannot have a career, this is just too
nerve-wracking!'
But
I know that I was there for a reason. I needed to be at the Met to get
what I needed for my singing. It is a fabulous place to learn, because
you are working with the best people in the world. You are hearing, up
close, in your face and personal, great singing, and there is no
substitute for that." She was also featured in many "Live from Lincoln
Center" performances including Francesca da Rimini, La forza del destino, Manon Lescaut, Cavalleria Rusticana and Rigoletto at the MET. She sang over 500 performances at the MET including majorcomprimario roles in such operas as Thaïs, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Die Zauberflöte, Der Fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Carmen, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Wozzeck, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, I Vespri Siciliani, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Adriana Lecouvreur, Porgy and Bess and Ariadne auf Naxos.
Comment by email:
PLEASE see/hear Isola Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuStIWAgiLA
[John Malveaux]
Comment by email:
PLEASE see/hear Isola Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuStIWAgiLA
[John Malveaux]
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