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SOPRANO
- Saundra DeAthos
- MEZZO-SOPRANO
- Stephanie Rodousakis
- TENOR
- Michael Boley
- Harold Meers
- BARITONE
- Greg Frens
- Ryan Kinsella
- David Templeton
- BASS
- Bradley Smoak
- CONDUCTOR
- Louis Salemno
- Allan R. Scott
- STAGE DIRECTOR
- Alexander Gelman
“Conduit par Louis Salemno d’une manière très sûre, avec un grand sens de la douceur expressive, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Houston s’est révélé un excellent interprète d’une musique qui lui reste peu familière.”
(OPERA INTERNATIONAL)
“It was conducted by Louis Salemno with a welcome vitality of spirit but suitably lyric phrasing when required, achieving a cohesive warmth of texture that allowed the voices to register comfortably from just about all areas of Pizzi’s staging.”
(OPERA MAGAZINE)
“Louis Salemno, whose tempos and dynamics were perfectly judged throughout the evening, is a conductor with a solid grasp of his repertory and the ability to translate his knowledge into a well-integrated performance.”
(OPERA MAGAZINE)
“The production’s strong suit was conductor Louis Salemno, who maintained momentum, rhythmic vitality and proper balance between stage and pit--no small achievement in view of the generally weak voices trying to project into the 3,000 Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. Salemno also coaxed from the stage a splendid, perfectly balanced quartet in which the problems of the individual voices became subordinate to a musical whole.”
(OPERA MAGAZINE)
“In the pit, Louis Salemno drew one of the best responses from the opera’s orchestra in recent memory, with a supercharged performance that at the same time gave full due to Turandot’s few moments of lyric repose.”
(OPERA NEWS)
“Louis Salemno kept the score moving forward with a firm, stylish hand.”
(OPERA MAGAZINE)
“First credit must go to Louis Salemno, the conductor, and to the excellent orchestra: this marvelous score has not always been interpreted with such specific feeling for its motion and its textures at the Metropolitan Opera, which does the piece well. All sections of the orchestra played with concentration and precision….Mr. Salemno held everything together in a masterly way. There was not a chord that didn’t, so to speak, know where it was going. Poulenc’s restricted, bittersweet harmonic language can seem monochrome if the performers do not know how to enter his musical world; Mr. Salemno knew how to get the full range of emotion and drama to speak in that language.”
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
“The orchestra played with splendid synergy, under the animated, knowledgeable direction of Louis Salemno”
(NEW YORK NEWSDAY)
“Conductor Louis Salemno presided over a magnificent musical performance, summoning a clean, crisp, immensely expressive interpretation of the rich textured score from the Houston Symphony…”
(HOUSTON POST)
“Conductor Louis Salemno also stepped in to take over the baton in a brisk, sonorous performance of the orchestral score. He shaved several minutes off the opera’s running time and his firm, attentive direction gave the musical score a tighter shape and a more robust character than heard from the opening night cast ten days ago.”
(HOUSTON POST)
“Salemno was brilliant in the pit.”
(PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS)
“They were aided, not to mention guided, in these endeavors by conductor Louis Salemno, whose sure grasp of the score urged remarkably clean, incisive playing from the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. Salemno’s direction informed every aspect of Verdi’s dark score, realized here in both sweeping grandeur and rich detail. From Rigoletto’s halting gait to the Duke’s confident swagger- mimicked colorfully by the instrumentalists- one felt that everything was in the right place and served the right purpose.”
(THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH)
“After years of indifferent playing, the orchestra, under Salemno, is creating something special in the pit. Primarily this has to do with rhythm. A new sense of pulse is coming through that motivates the sound and gives it thrust and shape. Salemno is also tidying up the playing. The strings, particularly, have sharpened their articulations…. The results were thrilling.”
(THE OREGONIAN)
“Leading and maintaining the momentum was the conductor, Louis Salemno. While allowing the singers to make the most out of their arias, he continually pushed forward through the score so that its conversational rhythm was always present.”
(WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
