RPO Tops Off the Month of Love with Delightful Italian Operatic Desserts
Rochester, NY – The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra prepares for a romantic Italian evening as it continues its Wegmans POPS Series with That’s Amore! featuring guest tenor Tonio DiPaolo. On Friday, February 27 and Saturday, February 28 at 8:00 pm at the Eastman Theatre, Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik conducts celebrated opera arias and popular songs from some of Italy’s best-known composers.
The RPO and DiPaolo will capitalize on the inherent ability of Italian opera to convey a vast array of emotion – from pathos to comedy, and from the flirtatious to the demure. Arias from Puccini’s Turandot, Verdi’s The Force of Destiny, and Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana will be paired with other beloved works like Be My Love, Come Back to Sorrento, and O Sole Mio.
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Tonio DiPaolo frequently performs in leading tenor roles with major national and international opera companies. He has taken the stage with the Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Canadian Opera Company, Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington Opera, Seattle Opera, and San Francisco Opera. He has received critical acclaim for his performances in Puccini’s Turandot, Tosca, and The Girl of the Golden West; Verdi’s Aida and Rigoletto; Bizet’s Carmen; I Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo; and Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, Jr. Mr. DiPaolo also is a popular figure on the concert stage, and has sung with orchestras in Baltimore, Detroit, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Tucson, among others. He has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., and Spoleto, Italy. Mr. DiPaolo debuted with the London Symphony Orchestra as a soloist in Verdi’s Requiem, which he also performed at his Edinburgh Festival debut.
Tickets for these performances are $20-58, available online 24/7 at www.rpo.org, by phone (454-2100) in person from the RPO Box Office and at area Wegmans. A convenience fee may apply. RPO Box Office hours are Monday-Saturday, 10:00 am-5:00 pm (non-concert Saturdays, 10:00 am-3:00 pm).
The POPS Series is sponsored by Wegmans; this concert is sponsored by Thomson Reuters, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Calabrese, and The DiMino Foundation.
Celebrating its 86th season in 2008-09, the RPO inspires and enriches the community through the art of music, presenting nearly 200 performances each season to a combined audience of an estimated quarter of a million people, including more than 70,000 who experience the RPO’s broad range of educational and community programs. The Orchestra is passionately dedicated to outstanding musical performance at the highest artistic levels, and has a unique tradition of musical versatility, commitment to music education in the broadest sense and a deep and enduring engagement with the community. The RPO has been honored with the New York State Governor’s Arts Award and two recent ASCAP awards for adventurous programming. RPO performances are made possible in part with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; the State of New York; Monroe County and the City of Rochester.
