The Peterborough Symphony Orchestra will be celebrating the holiday season with “Believe” at Showplace Performance Centre in downtown Peterborough at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday (December 2).
Award-winning Canadian soprano Ariane Cossette will join the PSO for the annual holiday concert, which will feature seasonal tunes receiving the full orchestral treatment as well as beloved classic arias.
Tickets are $40 for adults and $12 for students for all seats and are available in person at the Showplace box office from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, at the door one hour before the concert begins, or online anytime at showplace.org (student tickets are only available online).
“We will be including lots of music for the season, including popular arrangements of Christmas carols and holiday favourites as well as some great music by opera composers,” says the PSO’s music director and conductor Michael Newnham.
That includes “Je Veux Vivre” from the 1867 opera Roméo et juliette by French composer Charles Gounod, “Musetta’s Waltz” from the 1896 opera La bohème by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, and “Ah, fors’è lui” from the 1853 opera La traviata by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
The PSO will be welcoming soprano Ariane Cossette to join them for “Believe.” Originally from Trois-Rivieres in Quebec, Cossette is currently a member of the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio in Toronto.
Cossette is a graduate of Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and Université de Montréal. She also holds a Bachelors in Voice Performance from Conservatoire de musique de Montréal.
“Her aerial and powerful timbre with a tight vibrato, her stage presence, and her dynamic vocal lines immediately catch the viewer’s attention,” wrote Benjamin Goron about Cossette’s performance as Micaëla in La tragédie de Carmen at Université de Montréal in April 2022.
In early 2023, she won second prize in the Louis and Christina Quilico Awards and, more recently, first prize at the National Capital Opera Competition in Ottawa. As a concert soloist, she has performed with the Conservatoire’s Orchestra, with Choeurs Eternels in France, and with Orchestra Toronto.
“I was fortunate to meet and work with Ariane last spring in Toronto,” Newnham says. “She is most certainly a talent to watch and I am very happy that she accepted our invitation to appear with us.”
The PSO will also be performing holiday-themed pieces including Christmas Overture by British-Sierra Leonean composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — not to be confused with the 19th-century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after whom he was named.
Coleridge-Taylor is believed to have written the piece in 1911, the year before his tragic death at the age of 37 from pneumonia, but it wasn’t published until 1925, when Sydney Baynes arranged the piece for orchestra. A grand and festive overture with prominent brass, the composition mixes the Christmas carols “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,” “Good King Wenceslas,” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” with some original melodies Coleridge-Taylor is believed to have written for a children’s play called The Forest of Wild Thyme by Alfred Noyes, although it was never staged with the music.
VIDEO: “Christmas Overture” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – Orchestre La Fosse Ô Lyon
Other pieces will include the overture to the 1841 opera Nabucco by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, British conductor Leopold Stokowski’s orchestral arrangement of “Sheep May Safely Graze” by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Canadian composer Kevin Lau’s lively and festive arrangements of Christmas carols including “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Jingle Bells.” “Believe” will conclude — as is the PSO’s tradition — with an audience sing-along.
“The PSO’s holiday concerts are among my favourites every year,” Newnham says. “This is due to the very special atmosphere in our orchestra amongst the musicians, as well as our always very warm and enthusiastic audience.”
“Believe” begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 2nd at Showplace Performance Centre at 290 George Street North in downtown Peterborough. Note: there will be no pre-concert “Meet the Maestro” chat before this concert.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-24 season.
