BAYRAKDARIAN COMES TO WELLAND
by: Lynn Peppas

Welland Tribune (Ontario)
November 29, 2006 Wednesday

World-renowned soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian will be performing Love
Songs and other familiar favourites this Thursday, Nov. 30 for the
Welland-Port Colborne Concert series at Centennial’s J.M. Ennis
Auditorium. Bayrakdarian will be accompanied by pianist Serouj
Kradjian, who is, not only her partner on stage but in marriage
as well. Bayrakdarian and Kradjian have recently returned from an
international tour that included stops in Japan and throughout the US,
including New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

It’s an exciting honour to have a performer of this calibre performing
on stage in the city of Welland. Bayrakdarian is a celebrated opera
singer who’s graced many of the world’s major opera houses; she’s
wowed them in the UK as Susanna in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro at the
Royal Opera House in London, England. She opened the season at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote
and is a regular performer at the famous opera house.

Always searching for a musical challenge, Bayrakdarian has most
recently co-starred in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s one-act opera To
Hell and Back, with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Broadway
superstar and Tony award winner Patti LuPone. Based on a Greek myth
of the rape of Persephone, this work is a modern tale of a young woman
coming to terms with both an abusive marriage and her mother-in-law.

The Lebanon-born, Armenian-Canadian singer moved with her family to
Toronto as a teenager. She studied at the University of Toronto and
has an honours degree in biomedical engineering. Her first performances
in front of an audience were at church, and her life story is captured
in a CBC TV film A Long Journey Home, which chronicles her first trip
to Armenia. The country she has returned to record a CD of songs
written by Armenia’s national composer Gomidas Vartabed, with her
husband and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2000, Bayrakdarian won first prize in the Operalia competition,
and hasn’t looked back since. The highly acclaimed artist has won
three Juno awards, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Award,
the 2005 Virginia Parker Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts,
and a Metropolitan Opera National Council Award in 1997.

Throughout her career, she’s recorded on numerous albums including a
CBC record entitled Mozart; the 2006 Juno award winning Best Classical
Album Pauline Viardot-Garcia recorded with husband and was featured
singing Evenstar on the Oscar award-winning soundtrack for Lord of
the Rings: The Two Towers composed by Howard Shore.

Although the series is sold-out, opportunities to see individual shows
are available through member cancellations and can be purchased by
calling 905-788-1648.