CONCERTO FINALE

A native of Boston, soprano June Anderson is among the most prominent opera singers on the international opera and concert scene. She is distinguished by her vocal qualities: a timbre that does not lose its luster in the high notes, a remarkable range that makes the execution of high and fast passages appear easy and natural, a voice that is consistently crystal clear, and an interpretation that is always intense and engaging.

She began to taking voice lessons at age 11 and to 17 was the youngest finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions. She attends Yale University majoring in French and graduating cum laude.

After college studies began to seriously consider becoming a singer: "I decided to move to New York thinking that if I didn't become famous in two years, I would go to law school. After nine months I wasn't famous at all and I had run out of all my money but it was right then that I decided that I absolutely had to become a singer, to whatever it took. It was really a challenge, because nothing to that point was so easy anymore. When I was a child, or still a teenager, and I was studying singing privately, everything was easier, everyone was always telling me that I was great. But suddenly no one seemed to believe it anymore. So I thought 'Damn! I'll show to everyone how good I am!'"

She studied voice with Robert Leonard and made her New York City debut Opera in 1978 as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. In 1982, she was invited to to sing Semiramide at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. That was the start of her brilliant career, and from then she has graced the stages of almost every major theater in Europe and the United States. She has sung with the orchestras of Vienna, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Florence, Geneva, La Scala, Covent Garden, Venice, Rome, Bologna, the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia and has collaborated with leading conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Georges Prêtre, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Giuseppe Sinopoli, and Michael Tilson Thomas. She was the first non-Italian singer to to win the prestigious Bellini d'Oro award.

She is the one who sings the Queen of the Night aria in Milos Forman's film Amadeus.

He routinely performs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Pesaro Festival and the Aix en Provence Festival.

Her vocal talent allows her to master a wide repertoire, ranging from the role of Juliet(I Capuleti e i Montecchi), Norma, Violetta(La Traviata) to that of Tatiana(Eugene Onéguine).

In 2012 he played Pat Nixon(Nixon in China) at the Théâtre du Chatelet, where he will sing again in a recital in April 2014.

Now one of the most acclaimed and versatile baritones on the international stage, Paulo Szot returns to Spoleto where he made his debut in 2007 as Donato in Maria Golovin and where, in the last edition of the Festival, he paid tribute in a brilliant and eclectic evening to the music that on the Broadway stage won him the 2008 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Emile de Becque in South Pacific, as well as other awards such as the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Award.

In 2010, the Brazilian-born baritone made his acclaimed Metropolitan debut Opera as Kovalyov in a new production of Shostakovich's The Nose. Among his most famous performances: the role of Don Giovanni with Opéra de Bordeaux, Michigan Opera and Dallas Opera; Eugene Onegin, Guglielmo(Così fan tutte) andEnea (Dido and Aeneas) to Marseille; Count Almaviva(Le nozze di Figaro) at New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, De Vlaamse Opera and Aix-en-Provence; Escamillo with the Metropolitan Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Teatro Municipal de Santiago, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro; and Manon at the Metropolitan Opera. More recently he made his debut at the Opéra de Paris/Palais Garnier in Così fan tutte, at theOpera in Rome in _Il naso _and at La Scala in Milan in Cuore di cane.

He has also performed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops and at Avery Fischer Hall with the New York Philharmonic, where he presented his show_ An Evening with Paulo Szot_, acclaimed from critically and publicly and also presented as part of the American Songbook Series at Jazz at Lincoln Center and New York's famous Cafe Carlyle.

The 2013/2014 season sees him in two productions at the Metropolitan Opera, The Nose and Die Fledermaus, in The Marriage of Figaro in Bahrain and with the Australian Opera Company in the title role of Eugene Onegin. He will return to the Metropolitan Opera in 2014/2015 for The Death of Klinghoffer.

The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai was born in 1994 from the unification of the public radio corporation's orchestras in Turin, Rome, Milan and Naples, becoming one of Italy's most prestigious ensembles. The first concerts were conducted from Georges Prêtre and Giuseppe Sinopoli, followed from Jeffrey Tate, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Eliahu Inbal and Gianandrea Noseda.

Since November 2009 Juraj Valčuha has been the principal director.

Other significant presences on the podium include Carlo Maria Giulini, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Mstislav Rostropovič, Myung-Whun Chung, Riccardo Chailly, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Yuri Ahronovitch, Marek Janowski, Semyon Bychkov, Dmitrij Kitaenko, Aleksandr Lazarev, Valery Gergiev, Gerd Albrecht, Yutaka Sado, Mikko Franck, James Conlon, Roberto Abbado, and Kirill Petrenko.

Thanks to the presence of its concerts in radio (Radio3) and television (Rai1, Rai3 and Rai5) schedules, the OSN Rai has contributed to the dissemination of the great symphonic repertoire and pages of the historical and contemporary avant-garde, thanks to to commissions and first performances that have won artistic, editorial and recording recognition. Exemplary since 2004 is the contemporary music review Rai NuovaMusica.

The Orchestra holds to Turin regular concert seasons and special cycles, and is a frequent guest at major festivals such as MITO SettembreMusica, Biennale di Venezia, Ravenna Festival and Sagra Maletestiana in Rimini. Institutional engagements include Christmas concerts in Assisi broadcast worldwide and Republic Day celebrations.

In 2006 she was invited to the Salzburg Festival and the Berlin Philharmonie to celebrate Hans Werner Henze's 80th birthday.

Recent engagements include Abu Dhabi Classics, a tour of Germany, Austria and Slovakia, concerts at the RadiRO Festival and the Enescu Festival in Bucharest.

An important debut at the Musikverein in Vienna and a return to the Philharmonie in Berlin. It participated in the films-opera Rigoletto to Mantova, conducted by Mehta and directed by Bellocchio, and Cinderella, una favola in diretta, broadcast worldwide on Rai1. The orchestra is also involved in the recording of theme songs and soundtracks for Rai television programs. CDs and DVDs are often made from its live concerts.