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The Cuban soprano, Yetzabel Arias Fernandez, started her music studies in Havana in cello and piano. She graduated in choral conducting at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory and singing at the Superior Institute of Art in Havana. She continues her postgraduate studies in Italy, which she took up under the direction of Vincenzo Manno in Milan and Fernando Cordeiro Opa. She has also taken courses in 17th-century Italian music interpretation with Roberto Gini at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica di Milano. She is winner of the International Competition of Barroque singing in Chimay, Belgium and at the same time gaining great recognition from the audience. She has also won prizes in Concorso Internazionale di Canto Barocco F. Provenzale della Cappella de’ Turchini in Naples, as well as in the Concorso Internazionale di Musica Sacra in Rome.
During those years in Europe, Yetzabel Arias worked with the most distinguished Italian ensembles: Accademia Bizantina, La Risonanza, Academia Montis Regalis, La Venexiana, Cappella Pietà de’ Turchini, Arion Ensemble, Orchestra Milano Classica, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Turin, I Solisti della Scala and I Barocchisti, under the direction of Helmuth Rilling, Ottavio Dantone, Diego Fasolis, Claudio Cavina, Antonio Florio, Fabio Bonizzoni, Ruben Jais, etc. She has performed in important venues and halls such as Santa Cecilia concerts season in Rome, Teatre Graslin de Nantes, Societa del Quartetto in Milan, Auditorium G.Verdi in Milan, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Vienna, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, as well as Festivals in Brugges, Cologne, Stuttgart, Melk, Graz, Vienna, Ambronay, Santiago de Compostela, Barcelona, Amsterdam, The Hague, Florence, etc.
On the operatic stage Yetzabel Arias recently sang Rossane from George Frideric Handel's Alessandro at the Badisches Theater in Karlsruhe directed by Michael Form and staged by Alexander Fahima. In 2011 she was Argene in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Olimpiade at the Pergolesi-Spontini Festival in Jesi under the direction of Alessandro de Marchi and staged by Italo Nunziata. She sang the role of La Messaggera in Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi during the 30° Sablé Festival in France and the role of Speranza with Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana Ensemble.
In 2011 Yetzabel Arias sang G.B. Pergolesi’s Opera La Olimpiade (Megacle) under the baton of Ottavio Dantone in Opera Rara Festival (Polish premiere) at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Krakow and the great J.S. Bach's masterpieces Matthaus-Passion (BWV 244) with Diego Fasolis in Lugano and B Minor Mass (BWV 232) with Jordi Savall at Styriarte Festival. She took part in the European tour as Piacere from G.F. Handel’s Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza.
Among her last engagements, she sang Mozart’s C Minor Mass with Opera di Roma's Orchestra under the direction of Jaap van Zweden, Antonio Vivaldi's La Senna Festeggiante in Brugges and Bruxelles Festivals and Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in Italy with La Risonanza.
She made several recordings for Glossa. Among them G.F. Handel’s Tirsi, Clori e Fileno which won the important Stanley Prize 2010 for the Best Recording of the Year. Most of her concerts were broadcasted live in Italy and all over Europe.
Some of her forthcoming engagements include J.S. Bach's B minor Mass (BWV 232) with I Barocchisti at Internationales Bachfest Schaffhausen (Switzerland), A. Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans (Abra) at the Dortmund Festival in Germany with Accademia Bizantina, Antonio Caldara's Oratorio per la Passione (Giovanni) in Wroclaw, Bach's secular cantatas at the Le Festival Bach de Montréal and Washington DC with La Risonanza. Yetzabel Arias has been invited again to sing G.F. Handel's opera Alessandro, under the direction of maestro Michael Form at the next Handel Festspiele in Karlsruhe 2013. |
