Opera gala concerts in Katowice and Paris
Opera gala concerts with a sophisticated French soprano Patricia Petibon and under the baton of a first-class conductor Robert Reimer, the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra will perform at the concert halls in Katowice and Paris on February 19 (canceled) and 21, 2019. In connection with the announcement of national mourning on the day of the funeral of the tragically deceased Paweł Adamowicz – the Mayor of Gdańsk, concerts in the NOSPR planned for Saturday 19 January were canceled.
Patricia Petibon
The soprano Patricia Petibon was born in Montargis, France. Already interested in the piano and fine arts as a child, she earned a bachelor’s degree in musicology at the Paris Conservatoire and then went on to study singing there with Professor Rachel Yakar, graduating with a first prize in 1995. She was discovered by the acclaimed American conductor and harpsichordist William Christie and consequently often worked with his orchestra Les Arts Florissants, appearing with Christie at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, La Scala in Milan, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Wigmore Hall in London. She has also appeared with other preeminent conductors including Fabio Biondi, Charles Dutoit, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Marc Minkowski, Sir Roger Norrington, and Christophe Rousset. Patricia Petibon has been awarded three Victoires de la musique classique – as “Best Young Talent” in 1998 and as “Best Opera Singer” in 2001 and 2003.
In 2008 Patricia Petibon signed an exclusive recording agreement with Deutsche Grammophon. Her debut album, Amoureuses – arias by Mozart, Haydn and Gluck with Concerto Köln and Daniel Harding –, was released in autumn 2008 and won 2009’s BBC Music Magazine Award for “Best Opera Album”. 2010 sees the release of her recording Rosso, an album of Italian Baroque arias accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra and conducted by Andrea Marcon while 2011 brought about the third recording: Melancolía which contains Spanish arias and song. The soprano is accompanied by Orquesta Nacional de España and Josep Pons, conductor. So far the latest release is a CD of English, French, Spanish and Latin-American baroque songs and arias titled Nouveau Monde (with La Cetra and Andrea Marcon). Her DVDs include A Mozart Gala from Salzburg and a complete recording of Berg’s Lulu from Barcelona.
Apart from her Europian concert tour with the project Nouveau Monde – together with the prize-winning La Cetra Barockorchester Basel –, her engagements within this season include stage appearances in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Bavarian State Opera in Munich) and Mozart’s Lucio Silla (Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona).
Robert Reimer’s biggest passion is to bring people together and to share his love for music and the arts. He conducts a wide range of very different repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, from ballet to opera and from classical concerts to cross-over-projects. As a conductor, he appears regularly in CD-, TV, and DVD productions, which are broadcasted on European TV and released by international classic-labels.
He debuted lastly at important international opera houses like the Berliner Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he conducts since 2011 a premiere every year, the Grand Théatre de Genève, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, the Royal Danish Opera , the Finnish National Opera, the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona or the Copenhagen Opera Festival conducting opera like the Eugene Onegin, Freischütz, Magic Flute, Manon or Katja Kabánova and ballet productions like Nutcracker, Swanlake, Sleeping Beauty, Peer Gynt or Onegin.
Born in Luxemburg, he received his first engagement as pianist and assistant to the music director at the Hessian State Theatre Darmstadt even before finishing his studies in Cologne and Düsseldorf. He conducted there as Kapellmeister several opera and ballet performances. After that he has worked as assistant fo internationally renowned conductors, such as C. Eschenbach, S. Cambreling, M. Albrecht, J. Belohlavek, M. Boder, M. Schönwandt, R. Frühbeck de Burgos and D. Callegari at the Salzburg Festival and the opera houses of Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Geneva, Antwerp and Ghent, Brussels and Leipzig.
Meanwhile, he was invited to conduct in opera houses like Cologne, Wuppertal, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Oslo, Essen and Düsseldorf, where he debuted with Don Giovanni and conducted later as 1. Kapellmeister many different operas. Since then he worked with renowned singers like A. Denoke, D. Kuebler, P. Petibon, R. Gorr, M. Salminen, R. Trekel, A. Dohmen or J. Johnson.
His operatic repertoire includes both standard and lesser-known works, such as Ariadne in Naxos, Les Dialogues des Carmélites, Ligeti´s Grand Macabre or Alban Bergs Lulu. Mr. Reimer has also conducted some of the popular ballets and his production of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty at the Leipzig Opera has been recorded for German TV (MDR) and broadcast on ARTE in 2004. In cross-over-concerts he worked together with international stars like Chris de Burgh, Ute Lemper, Till Brönner or Joja Wendt.
As a symphonic conductor Robert Reimer has worked with many important orchestras, such as the Danish National Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the RSO Frankfurt, the Luxemburg Philharmonic, the Philharmonic Orchestra Strasbourg, the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonietta, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra the Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich, or the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2013 german label “Hänssler Classic“ published a CD conducted by him in their “Les Ballets Russes“-series (vol. 9) with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and music by D. Milhaud, H. Sauguet and D.Scarlatti. He conducted last season production of Schubert´s Winterreise by Hans Zender at the Luxemburg City Theater with the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Julian Prégardien. A concert performance in presence of the composer was broadcasted live at German Radio SR2-KLASSIK. The CD from this concert has been released end of 2016 by P.Rhéi. He also conducted a CD with Danish Soprano Susanne Elmark and the Sönderjyllands Symphony Orchestra which was also released end of 2016 by NAXOS.
Some of his concerts have been recorded lastly for television: the “Final Concert“ of the Copenhagen Opera Festival with the Malmö Opera Orchestra was broadcasted live on Danish TV DR-DK (2014+15), the “First Night“ of the Berlin Classic Open Air at the Gendarmenmarkt (2014-17) and the Elblandfestspiele (2015-17) were broadcasted on German TV RBB/ARD. Some of his performances at Deutsche Oper Berlin or Geneva Opera have been broadcasted live at French and Italian TV (Mezzo-TV or Mondo Classica). The Nutcracker
and the Sleeping Beauty with the Berlin Staatsballett at Deutsche Oper Berlin has been released by BelAir Classiques as DVD.
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