Italian soprano Federica Lombardi made her American opera debut last year with New York Metropolitan Opera.
This weekend, she makes her American orchestra debut with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
The singer, who has sang in some of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses from La Scala in Milan to Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, will perform the arias from Rossini’s “Stabat Mater,” “Petite Messe Solennelle” and “Messa di Gloria” with the TSO Chorus on Friday, Jan. 24, and Sunday, Jan. 26. The program also features Respighi’s “Church Windows” and the world premiere of a work composed by an alumnus of the orchestra’s Young Composers Project, Robert Lopez-Hanshaw. It is the third work that the orchestra has commissioned from a YCP alum.
Lombardi’s Tucson appearance is part of the eighth annual Tucson Desert Song Festival, which continues through Feb. 16. And while Tucson marks her American orchestra debut, it is not the first time she’s been here.
“I have been in Tucson already twice, and I’m always impressed by the beautiful landscape around the city and the downtown,” the 30-year-old fiancée of TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez said in an email interview. “I like very much the weather and I also think it’s a great city that offers many ways of entertainment in its vibrant downtown.”
Gomez, who is in the middle of his third TSO season, said it took some arm wrestling to arrange Lombardi’s TSO appearance. The timing had to fit her full schedule of European operas and the repertoire had to be just right.
“This finally was the right time and she loved the idea of doing the Rossini music as well because she’s doing it some other places (his season),” said Gomez, who met Lombardi in 2014 when he was conducting Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in Italy; she was singing the role of Donna Elvira.
“I’m always really happy” performing with Gomez at the podium, she said. “He always supports me a lot, and it’s a privilege, in a situation where we usually don’t have a lot of time for rehearsal, to have the possibility to deeply discuss with him the music and the interpretation.”
Lombardi said she likes Rossini’s sacred music because it has the dramatic flair of his operas.
“Rossini started his compositional activity with sacred music and we can see in it a clear journey towards the opera: there’s a strong operatic atmosphere in it, very theatrical and dramatic,” she said, adding that this will be the first time that she will perform the Rossini works in concert. “I’m very much looking forward (to it).”
Doing the TSO concert also gives her a chance to challenge herself artistically. In opera, she can lose herself in the role of her character. In concert, it’s just her on stage playing herself.
“Singing in concert is more intimate and personal,” she said. “The interpretation can be driven in the way your feelings go, without any staging influence, only you, your singing and the music. For me it’s also good to stay closer to the conductor to create an intense dialogue with the whole orchestra.”
Gomez said he and Lombardi plan to marry later this year.
