Zheng Zhou
Encyclopedia
- For the provincial capital of HenanHenanHenan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
, People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of ChinaChina , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, see ZhengzhouZhengzhouZhengzhou , is the capital and largest city of Henan province in north-central China. A prefecture-level city, it also serves as the political, economic, technological, and educational centre of the province, as well as a major transportation hub for Central China...
.
Zheng Zhou is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
who has sung at many of the world's finest opera houses. His opera credits include performances with the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
, San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
, New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
, Tulsa Opera
Tulsa Opera
The Tulsa Opera, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the 18th oldest opera company in the United States and is ranked among the top 10 regional opera companies in the nation. The company produces three opera productions each season performed at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center...
, Opera Illinois, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos
Teatro Nacional de São Carlos
The Teatro Nacional de São Carlos is an opera house in Lisbon, Portugal. It was opened on July 30, 1793 by Queen Maria I as a replacement for the Tejo Opera House, which was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake...
, Teatro Real
Teatro Real
The Teatro Real or simply El Real , is a major opera house located in Madrid, Spain.-History:...
, the Philippine Opera Company, and Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera is the second largest performing arts organization in British Columbia and the largest opera company in western Canada.It performs in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre accompanied currently by the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, one of two specialized opera orchestras in Canada...
to name just a few. His concert work includes performances with the American Composers' Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...
, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra
New Mexico Symphony Orchestra
The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 20, 2011, announcing that it would cease operations and existence. Orchestra members were notified of the board's decision to file for bankruptcy by email, a few hours after the vote was taken...
, Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
, Baltimore Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Colorado Symphony, the China National Symphony, and the Shanghai Symphony among many others.
Zheng Zhou made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in 1993 as Yamadori in Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
, and later returned to sing Ping in Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
and Fiorello in Il Barbiere de Siviglia. His San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
debut came in 1992 in La Forza del Destino
La forza del destino
La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
; with that company he has also sung in Milhaud's Christophe Colomb
Christophe Colomb
Christophe Colomb is an opera in two parts by the French composer Darius Milhaud. The libretto, by the poet Paul Claudel, is based on his own play Le livre de Christophe Colomb about the life of Christopher Columbus. The opera was first performed at the Staatsoper, Berlin on 5 May 1930 in a German...
. He sang the roles the Father and Ludovie in Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
' La Belle et la Bete at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and subsequently on tour across the United States, Europe, Mexico and Japan.
Zhou has become particularly associated with the works of Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
. He appeared in the world premiere of The White Raven
The White Raven
The White Raven is a 1998 action crime thriller starring Ron Silver, Joanna Pacuła and Roy Scheider. Directed by Jakub Z. Rucinski and Andrew Stevens, the film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Blodgett....
in Lisbon in 1998 and reprised his role in Madrid, and in the 2005 U.S. premiere of the opera ifor the opening season of the Lincoln Center Festival with New York City Opera. He has also recorded and performed the role of Abraham Lincoln in Glass' the Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down.
Various reviews agree that Zhou possesses a "rich creamy baritone" (Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
) voice, and has excelled with major opera companies and orchestras in a wide range of styles from Mozart, Donizetti and Schubert to Verdi, Mendelssohn
Mendelssohn
Mendelson is a Polish/German Jewish family name, meaning "son of Mendel", Mendel being a Yiddish diminutive of the Hebrew given name Menahem, meaning "consoling" or "one who consoles".Mendelssohn is the surname of a number of people:...
and Orff
Orff
Orff can refer to:*Carl Orff, a German composer, known for his teaching method, the Orff Schulwerk.**Orff Schulwerk encompasses the Orff instruments and teaching methods for children....
. He has been hailed by the St. Louis Dispatch as "a superior musician", while his performance of Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
led the San Francisco Examiner to exclaim "Zheng Zhou shone. His fiercely concentrated, vocally and theatrically incisive Enrico would have been an asset in any Lucia." The Opera Quarterly wrote that "Zheng Zhou brings a fine, manly baritone to Lincoln's Verdian utterances" in Glass' The Civil Wars
The CIVIL warS
The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down is an opera created in the early 1980s by director Robert Wilson to music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and others...
, while the International Record Review described him as "gloriously full-voiced."
Mr. Zhou can be heard on his "Art Songs" CD on Brioso Recordings performing the works of C.P.E. Bach, Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in...
, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Georgy Sviridov
Georgy Sviridov
Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet Russian neoromantic composer....
; as Abraham Lincoln on Nonesuch Records' recording of Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
' The Civil Wars
The CIVIL warS
The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down is an opera created in the early 1980s by director Robert Wilson to music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and others...
; as Ludovic on Nonesuch Records' recording of Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
' La Belle et la Bete; as the baritone soloist in Johannes Somary's Song of Innocence
Song of Innocence
Song of Innocence is a 1968 album by David Axelrod. The album was inspired by Songs of Innocence, a collection of poems by English poet William Blake. An Allmusic review describes the album as a "suite that blended pop, rock, jazz, theater music, and R&B" and has "withstood the test of time"...
on Premier Recordings; in Jerrold Fisher
Jerrold Fisher
Jerrold Fisher is an American composer, conductor, singer, arranger and musician. In 1970 he was Acting Music Director and Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor of the Haddonfield Symphony Orchestra for seven seasons. Mr...
's Hosannah on Compact Disc Digital Audio; and in Jason K. Hwang's chamber opera The Floating Box on New World Records. He has appeared on the San Francisco Opera's Schwabacher Debut Recital Series.
Mr. Zhou holds degrees from the University of Illinois, St. Louis Conservatory, the Shanghai Conservatory, and a diploma in lieder performance from the Schubert Institute in Vienna.