Artist Biographies
ARTUR RUCINSKI
Artur Rucinski has been invited by Daniel Barenboim to sing Eugene Onegin at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin in March/April 2010 under the baton of the Maestro himself and with Rolando Villazon as tenor colleague. Also in April 2010 Mr. Rucinski will be appearing in Carmina Burana at the Vienna Musikverein and in May 2010 at the opening gala of the Vienna Festwochen which is going to be broadcast live in about 25 countries. In summer 2010 he will make his debut at the Bregenz Festival as Tadeusz in the rarely performed opera The Passenger by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Future engagements also include La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor and Barbiere di Siviglia at the Hamburg State Opera as well as a new production of Manon and Eugene Onegin in Valencia.
The young Polish Baritone has been singing in opera houses in Eastern Europe for the past years to great acclaim. His breath control, outstanding legato and the distinctive colour of his voice earned him the coveted “Paszport Polityki Award” of the weekly magazine “Polityka” as Singer of the year 2008.
His repertoire centers around the bel canto, the Verdi as well as the Russian repertoire, including Yeletsky in “Pique Dame” and the title role in Eugene Onegin. Of his 2002 debut at the National Theatre in Warsaw in the role of Eugene Onegin, Polish Music Journal “Ruch Muzyczny” reported “Artur Rucinski’s beautiful singing and lyric quality was the highlight of the evening’s Eugene Onegin. This young baritone’s powerful dramatic voice made Onegin come alive…”
Mr. Rucinski’s features regularly at the National Opera in Warsaw where he sings Eugene Onegin, Prince Yeletsky in Pique Dame, Janusz in Moniuszko’s Halka, Sharpless in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Niklausse/Muse (Baritone version) in Harry Kupfer’s production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann. He opened the 2008-2009 season in Warsaw as Valentin in the new Robert Wilson's Faust, followed by Lord Ashton in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Yeletsky at the Krakow Opera under Valerij Gerghiev, the Priest Grandier in Devils from Loudun by K. Penderecki, and Ford in Falstaff at the Wrozlaw Opera. At the International Beethoven Festival 2009 in Warsaw, he sang Manon Lescaut, conducted by M. Gomez-Martinez and appeared at the Teatro Liceu Barcelona in the title role of Szymanowski’s Krol Roger.
Mr. Rucinski has been heard as Marcello in La Boheme in Warna, Bulgaria and at the Krakow Opera, was Ping in Turandot in Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo and the Paphos Aphrodite Festival in Cyprus with Eva Marton, in Carmina Burana in Sofia, Riccardo in I Puritani in Lodz, Silvio in I Pagliacci in the Lvov National Opera, and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte at the Krakow Opera.
While still a student, Mr. Rucinski made his debut at the Warsaw Chamber Opera in 2001 as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. Since then he appeared with that company as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte, Eugene Onegin, as Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia and most recently as Conte Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.
As a concert artist Mr. Rucinski was heard with Polish Radio and Polish Television at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in the world premiere of W. Balakauska’s opera La Lontaine, in the Fauré Requiem and Carmina Burana at the International Festival in Warna and for Bulgarian Television, as well as Handel’s Messiah and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Paris and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung with the Silesian Philharmonic. In autumn of 2009 he sang Britten’s War Requiem under Neville Marriner in Gdansk, and Brahms Requiem under Gerd Albrecht in Warsaw. The Oslo Philharmonic invited him for Carmina Burana concerts in January 2010 and the Dresden Philharmonic for Penderecki’s Lukas Passion in 2011.
Mr. Rucinski’s recordings include Ford in Falstaff, A. Marko’s Messa (world premiere concert on DUX Label) and a CD of Polish and Italian songs entitled “The Best Polish Singers” (also on DUX).
Artur Rucinski is a graduate of Warsaw Academy of Music. He was the 2002 winner of the Adam Didur Opera Competition in Bytom and is an award-winner of many international vocal competitions, including the 2003 Belvedere Competition (honorable mention), the Salomea Kruszelnicka Competition in Lviv, Ukraine (2003), and the Concorso Internazionale Toti Dal Monte Competition in Treviso, Italy (special prize 2005).
James Vaughan
The Irish-born pianist, James Vaughan, has long been established as one of Europe’s most sought-after accompanists and operatic coaches.
He graduated with an honours degree in composition and musicology from Trinity College Dublin. At the same time he was awarded the Fellowship of Trinity College London. Invitations followed to appear as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in concerti of Mozart, Shostakovich and Rakhmaninoff.
His preference for music-making with singers and instrumentalists however soon led to invitations to appear at many of Europe’s leading festivals including the Festival of the Accademia Chigiana di Siena with renowned violinist Riccardo Brengola and cellist Alain Meunier, at the festival of Sermoneta with clarinetist Antony Pay, and as the pianist for masterclasses of many leading singers including Sena Jurinac, Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and James King, throughout Europe. He appeared as soloist in the Golden Room of the Vienna MusikVerein, and thereafter performed frequently in all the Viennese concert venues, MusikVerein, BrahmsSaal and KonzertHaus, both as Lied-accompanist and as founder member of the chamber music group “Ensemble Contrasts Vienna”. The ensemble was invited to give its own series of recitals in the Vienna KonzertHaus, and a subsequent C.D. recording of works by Brahms, Bartok and Glinka was launched by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (O.R.F.).
In the field of opera, having worked for several seasons with the Dublin Grand Opera Society (Opera Ireland), James Vaughan was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship to study Otaloan culture and language at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Immediately following this, he was appointed Studienleiter (Head of Music Staff) at the WienerKammerOper, which group he accompanied on tour to Japan in the Mozart year 1991. He was subsequently engaged by the Vienna State Opera (WienerStaatsOper) as SoloKorrepetitor working with most of today’s leading conductors and singers, including Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Barbara Frittoli, Leo Nucci, Agnes Baltsa, Natalie Dessay, Renato Bruson and Edita Gruberova. He was chosen to assist Mstslav Rostropovic in the world premiere of Schnittke’s opera “Gesualdo”, and to prepare the company of singers for the premiere of Krenek’s “Kehraus um Sankt Stefan”. He also assisted at the rehearsals for the debut of Carlo Maria Giulini in 1996 at the WienerStaatsOper. He appeared regularly as cembalist in the operas of Mozart, Gluck and Rossini, and on a further seventy occasions as pianist and keyboard player in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, - the Vienna Philharmonic.
In 1990, James Vaughan was appointed to the staff of the Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst (the University of Vienna) as lecturer in Piano and Score-reading. From the mid-nineties, James Vaughan became increasingly in demand by international opera companies for the preparation of their singers. Hence followed invitations to Italy, to the Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova and the Teatro Dante Alighieri di Ravenna, to the Megaron theatre in Athens, to the inauguration of the Sao Pedro theatre of Sao Paolo, Brazil, to the launching of the first New Zealand Ring cycle in wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
Further invitations to festivals throughout Europe, in the middle-east and in Japan and China followed.
In 1998 James Vaughan was invited by Maestro Riccardo Muti to assist in his production of “Goetterdaemmerung” at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Since then he has worked with Riccardo Muti on seventeen productions including all of the productions in the Verdi anniversary year in 2001.
In addition to his duties at Teatro alla Scala, James Vaughan has, since 1999 been a regular visitor to the Opera de la Bastille in Paris, at the invitation of the Music Director, James Conlon. He has most recently appeared in recital with soprano Barbara Frittoli at the Teatro Liceu of Barcelona, the Wigmore Hall, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Lincoln Centre in New York and the MusikVerein in Vienna. In 2008, James Vaughan accompanied renowned baritone Leo Nucci in a recital to celebrate 30 years of his career at Teatro alla Scala. A DVD of the occasion has been released.
In 2005, James Vaughan was appointed Head of Music Staff at Teatro alla Scala di Milano.