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MENDELSSOHN
Elijah

Saturday, November 18, 2023 at 7:00
GRACE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
    684 Broadway, Newburgh, NY

Sunday, November 19, 2023 at 4:00
WARWICK REFORMED CHURCH

    16 Maple Avenue, Warwick, NY

Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” is a masterful oratorio that captures the tumultuous life of the biblical prophet with both grandeur and delicate beauty. Conceived in the spirit of Mendelssohn’s Baroque idols, Bach and Handel, “Elijah” was first performed in 1846 to immediate acclaim. It is a work that reflects Mendelssohn’s own Romantic sensibilities while paying homage to the oratorios of the past. The music is rich with orchestral color and choral

harmony, creating scenes of intense drama that

bring the Old Testament stories to vivid life.

The libretto, crafted by Julius Schubring,

weaves together the narrative of Elijah as

told in the books of Kings with psalms and

other biblical texts, resulting in a deeply moving

experience. The premiere, conducted by Men-

delssohn himself, solidified “Elijah” as a

staple of the choral repertoire, celebrated

for its emotional depth and its portrayal

of faith and humanity.

    Baritone Jeffrey Goble sings Elijah, with soloists Jennifer Gliere, soprano, Kathleen Reveille, mezzo-soprano, Jeduthun Kim, tenor and Andrew Martens, bass, who also provides a running plot narration. The Hudson Opera Theatre Chorus and Orchestra are conducted by Ron De Fesi.

Meet the Artists

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Elijah

Jeffrey Goble

Jeffrey Goble, baritone, has been enter-taining audiences across the world with roles such as Giovanni (Don Giovanni), DC Public Opera; Conte Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro), International Vocal Arts Insti-tute, Tel Aviv, Israel; Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Halifax Summer Opera, Canada; Pacific Opera Project, Pasadena, CA; Figaro (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), San Fran-cisco Conservatory; Escamillo (Carmen), Commonwealth Lyric Opera, Boston; Hudson Opera Theatre, NY; Pandolfe, (Cendrillon), Resonance Works, Pittsburgh, PA; Halifax; Utopia Opera, NYC; Schau-nard (La Bohème), Opera North, Lebanon, NH; Hudson Opera Theatre; Dandini (La Cenerentola), Bay View Music Festival, Mich.; Sweeney (Sweeney Todd), Bay Town, TX; Registrar/Yamadori (Madama Butterfly), Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Keeper, (The Rake’s Progress), Music Aca-demy of the West, Santa Barbara, Chau-tauqua Institute; Melisso, (Alcina), San Francisco Conservatory Baroque; Tom Joad (The Grapes of Wrath), Moores Opera Center, Houston; Fiorello (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Music Academy of the West, and in Philip Glass’s Hydrogen Jukebox, Utoptia Opera, NYC. He has performed solos in concerts with the Orquestra Sinfonica de Mineria, Mexico City; Israeli Chamber Orchestra, Tel Aviv; Dartmouth College, the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, Johnstown, PA, among others. Festivals include the Chautauqua School, Oberlin in Italy, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Hali-fax Summer Opera, and Music Academy of the West. His devotion to Art Song has led to performances as a recitalist inclu-ding Schumann’s Dichterliebe with the Carnegie Hall foundation and the Marilyn Horne Legacy series. B.M. Eastman School of Music; M.M., Moores School of Music, Houston, TX; Post-Graduate Diploma, San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

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Mezzo-soprano Soloist

Kathleen Reveille

Kathleen Reveille, mezzo-soprano, has been praised for her “soaring and poised” vocal ability. Most recently, Reveille was awarded second prize in the Premiere Opera Foundation/ NYIOP international vocal competition. Ms. Reveille is a twice-nominated recording artist for her perfor-mances with the Warsaw Philharmonic. Those performances include the Polish premieres of Britten’s The Turn of The Screw, and the double bill of Vaughn Williams’ Riders to The Sea; Holst’s At The Boars Head. (International Classical Music Awards, Best Opera Album of the Year, 2015. 2016.) In a review from Gramophone Magazine, “Kathleen Reveille, with her baleful, dark mezzo, is a near-ideal Miss Jessel.” In 2018 Ms. Reveille made her Carnegie Hall début as the mezzo soloist in Mozart’s Requiem; Cecilia Chorus of New York, as well as completing her first summer as an apprentice singer with the Santa Fe Opera, covering Zulma in L’Italiana in Algeri. In the summer of 2019 Reveille made her Santa Fe Opera stage début as the Mayor’s Wife in Jenůfa. Most recent roles include Maddalena (Rigoletto) and Flora (La Traviata) with the Hudson Opera Theatre. Reveille received a Master of Music from Yale University (2016), and a Bachelor of Music from Mercyhurst University; D’Angelo Opera Theatre (2014). Ms. Reveille adds the role of Dalila to her repertoire in Hudson Opera Theatre’s upcoming performances of Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila in April of 2024.

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Tenor Soloist

Jeduthun Kim

Jeduthun Chung Gu Kim, tenor, is an Assistant Professor of Voice Ouachita Baptist University. He holds a DMA from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, an MM from New Jersey City University, and a BM from Han Yang University in South Korea. Dr. Kim has appeared in the US at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the National Opera Center, and DiMenna Center, and internationally in South Korea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Peru. He has sung with Hudson Opera Theatre, New Rochelle Opera, New York Lyric Opera, Amore Opera, Wyckoff Opera, Garden State Philharmonic, New York Queens Choral Society, New York Westchester Choral Society, Martina Arroyo Foundation, the Korea National Opera, Chosun Opera, and Yewool Opera, etc. His  operatic credits include Alfredo (La traviata), Chevalier (Dialogues des Carmélites), Don José, Don Ottavio, Duke (Rigoletto), Edgardo (Lucia), Ferrando (Cosi fan tutte), Nemorino, Peter Quint, Rodolfo, Romeo, Tamino, and Chairman (Mary Poppins, The Musical). He has been featured in Bach’s B minor Mass, Beethoven’s Symphony No.9, Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio, the Verdi Requiem, and also in musical theatre showcases, and crossover genre concerts. He is the winner of the 2021-22 USO Concerto Competition, the Dominick Argento Fellowship, the New York Lyric Opera National Competition, the Peter Elvins National Vocal Competition, the American Opera Idol National Vocal Competition, and the John J. Cali Young Artist Award.

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Soprano Soloist

Jennifer Gliere

Jennifer Gliere, soprano, from Cincinnati, Ohio, has been described as “a sensitive artist who knows how to turn a phrase while giving urgent meaning to the text.” She has appeared in recital and oratorio in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, and throughout the United States. She has given two recital tours in Mexico, performing in live festivals and events around the country as well as giving master classes to several youth choirs and appearing in television and radio studios. Her repertoire runs the gamut from Barbara Strozzi chamber music and cantatas, early Baroque zarzuelas, Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, Bach’s B Minor Mass/Magnificat, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater to Luigi Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigionia and Poulenc’s Gloria. She has sung under the batons of Leon Botstein, James Conlon, Jesús López Cobos, Paul O’Dette, and Erich Kunzel, among others. Summer 2019 found her in Russia, performing recitals in Ekaterinburg and Moscow. Equally at home on the concert and operatic stages, Gliere has most recently garnered rave reviews for her portrayal of Violetta in La traviata; OperaWire noted that she was a “delicate powerhouse... displaying vocal effervescence as good as any champagne.” Other acclaimed roles include Musetta in La bohème, Suzel in Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, and Gilda in Rigoletto. She has been involved with productions at the Boston Early Music Festival, Bard Opera Theatre, Regina Opera, and Amore Opera. Favorite operatic credits at home and abroad include Le nozze di Figaro, and The Telephone/Old Maid and the Thief.

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Narrator & Bass Soloist

Andrew Martens

Andrew Martens, bass, is a versatile performer, equally comfortable on both the operatic and concert stages. Highlights of his career include Francesca Zambello’s The Nose by Shostakovich and Balthasar in Schumann’s Genoveva for the Bard Summerscape. He made his Carnegie Hall debut as Ramphis in Aida and Alvaro in Verdi’s Alzira with New York Grand Opera. Also at Carnegie Hall, he sang the Soothsayer with the American Composers Orchestra in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. Seiji Ozawa selected him to play Swallow in Peter Grimes at its 50th Anniversary Celebration of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood. His long association with Hudson Opera Theatre includes the Villains in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Méphistophêlès in Faust, Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Colline in La Bohème, Ramfis in Aïda, Sarastro in The Magic Flute, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Bartolo in Le Nozze di Figaro, Gremin in Eugene Onegin, one of The Three Bassos, and soloist in the Mozart, Brahms and Verdi Requiems, as well as many others. And, on occasion, when he is not singing a principal role, he has been gracious enough to lend his opulent voice to the bass section of the chorus. He is well-known in Latvian communities around the US and abroad as a major proponent of Latvian folk music, having given numerous recitals of traditional Latvian folk songs, some of which date back well over a thousand years.

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Conductor

Ron De Fesi

Ron De Fesi, conductor. Ron has been the artistic director of the Hudson Opera Theatre since its founding in 1977 (yes, 47 years)! A student of world-renowned conductor Sixten Ehrling while at the Juilliard School, Maestro De Fesi also attended the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, Germany completing 

specialized study in Baroque and Classical performance practice. He has been artistic director and principal conductor for several organizations, including the Tri-State Regional Opera, the Family Opera of New Jersey, the Delaware Valley Opera, the First Coast Opera and the Ballet Theatre of Westches-ter.  He has directed and/or conducted over 350 productions, and figures he has about 350 more to go. In his career as a basso cantate, he has sung over 100 differ-ent roles, of which his favorites are Phillip II in Don Carlo, the title role in Gianni Schicchi, Fiesco in Simon Boccanegra, Zac-caria in Nabucco, and Boris in Boris Godu-nov. Also a gifted orchestrator and arranger, his operatic and ballet reduc-tions continue to be heard globally as well as his arrangements for numerous instru-mental ensembles of everything from classics to pops.  A church organist since the age of fourteen, he also plays the cello and the piano and teaches voice. Many of his students have become professional singers in the operatic, musical theatre, and pop genres, and even one in country music. He has been the musical director of Laudamus Children’s Chorus in New York City, and is the Organist and Director of Choristers at the Grace United Methodist Church in Newburgh, NY. ...and no, he doesn’t sleep much!

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