Arts and Entertainment

Jennifer Trost to perform Schumann song cycle

Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State voice professor and soprano Jennifer Trost will perform Robert Schumann's iconic song cycle "Frauenliebe und-leben" during the weekly Bach's Lunch concert series at 12:10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 8, in Eisenhower Chapel. Admission is free. She is joined by collaborative pianist Svetlana Rodionova.

This concert is available on livestream at the Penn State School of Music.

Program

Frauenliebe und -leben, Op. 42 - Robert Schumann

Seit ich ihn gesehen

Er, der Herrlichste von allen

Ich kann's nicht fassen

Du Ring an meinem Finger

Helft mir, ihr Schwestern

Süsser Freund

An meinem Herzen

Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan

Trost is active as an opera singer, recitalist, voice teacher, and masterclass technician. The majority of her career has been spent as a soprano – first as a lyric soprano and finally as a young-dramatic soprano. She is now singing both soprano and mezzo-soprano repertoire.

Her first professional engagements were as a resident artist at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera (now the Los Angeles Opera) and as an apprentice artist at the Santa Fe Opera. Following those experiences, her career was based in Germany where she spent four years as a leading soprano with the Wuppertal Opera and nine years as a soprano soloist at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Favorite roles were the Countess in Mozart’s "Le Nozze di Figaro," Elettra in Mozart’s "Idomeneo," Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s "Eugene Onegin," Mařenka in Smetana’s "The Bartered Bride," and Ortlinde in Wagner’s "Die Walküre."

She was privileged to work regularly with well-known conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Wolfgang Sawallisch, James Levine, and especially Zubin Mehta, general music director of the Bavarian State Opera. Trost sang as a guest artist at the Komische Oper in Berlin, the National Theater in Mannheim, the Salzburg Music Festival, the Opéra de Paris Garnier, the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Italy, the British Broadcasting Corporation (Proms) in London, the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, the Munich Radio Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic. She sang the role of Magdalena (a role specifically composed for her) in the world premiere of Aribert Reimann's "Bernarda Albas Haus."

As a recitalist, Trost has frequently collaborated with Arlene Shrut, performing works by Wagner, Berg, Debussy, Schumann and Ben Moore, among others. A highlight of their collaboration was the premiere of "Four Songs of the Heart," a cycle written specifically for them by Judith Cloud, based on poems by Kathleen Raine. Judith Cloud recently wrote another piece for Trost, a monodrama called "Beethoven’s Slippers" (for voice, piano and string trio) based on a text by Douglas Atwill. The world premiere took place at Northern Arizona University in November 2016.  After additional performances in Los Angeles, Trost is touring the work in the piano/voice version in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey.

Trost earned her bachelor’s degree in music education at Albion College in Albion, Michigan; a master of music degree in applied voice at Michigan State University, and took advanced courses at the doctoral level at the University of Southern California. She taught three years at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, Germany, followed by a year spent as a visiting associate professor of voice and acting head of the voice area at the University of California-Santa Barbara. As an associate professor at Penn State, she teaches voice, as well as the song literature and opera literature courses.

Trost is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing and the National Opera Association. For several summers, she was a member of the artist faculty at the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, North Carolina.

Jennifer Trost, soprano Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated February 5, 2018