Soprano Chen Reiss will perform with Klaus Mäkelä and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as the featured soloist in the orchestra’s Christmas Matinee on the 25 December at Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. She will sing two contrasting concert arias – Felix Mendelssohn’s Infelice and Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn’s Hero und Leander. The programme also features orchestral works including Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides and Scherzo from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ as well as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’. Following the annual tradition, the Christmas Matinee will be broadcast by AVROTROS, live on the radio on NPO Klassiek, and on television on NPO 2 at 4:00 pm CET. More information and tickets are available here. Reiss will also perform the same programme with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and at the Philharmonie in Cologne from the 20-22 December.
Soprano Chen Reiss has established a strongly acclaimed and distinctive career, enchanting audiences with “one of the most perfect Strauss voices one could wish for” (Classical Source), “a voice of silver brightness and clarity” (Bachtrack) with “immaculately produced and enticing tone matched by superb musicianship” (Opera News, USA).
In the 2023/24 season, Reiss was named Artist in Residence at the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Recent and upcoming highlights include debuts with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and the Orchestra National du Capitole de Toulouse, as well as return engagements with the Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Lucerne Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. In addition, she makes her debut in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Wiener Akademie and Le Cercle d’Harmonie at the Festival de Paques in Aix en Provence, sings Bach Cantatas at Vienna’s Musikverein, and brings her programme of Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn with the Jewish Chamber Orchestra of Munich to the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest.
On the concert stage in recent seasons she gave her first performances of Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Mahler Festival, Bruckner’s Mass in F minor and Dvorak’s Stabat Mater, and appeared in signature repertoire including Mozart’s Requiem with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and Christoph Eschenbach, Berg’s Sieben fruhe lieder with the SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart under Vasily Petrenko, and Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, under the baton of Simone Young. Recent recordings include Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov (Pentatone), Schreker’s ‘Vom ewigen leben’ with Christoph Eschenbach and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (for Deutsche Grammophon), and ‘Immortal Beloved’, a recording of Beethoven arias and scenas with the Academy of Ancient Music for Onyx Classics.
Recent operatic succeses include the title role in Cavalli’s La Calisto (Teatro alla Scala, Milan), Handel’s Ginevra (Ariodante, Royal Opera House Covent Garden) Aennchen (Der Freischutz, Wiener Staatsoper) and Mozart’s Zaide (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma). Her repertoire also encompasses Donna Anna and Contessa (Le nozze di Figaro), Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), Zdenka (Arabella), Liu (Turandot), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) and the title roles in Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen and Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea.
Photo Credit: Paul Marc Mitchell
