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8.2.2001 00:17
It's hello, goodbye for R.I. natives this week
Rhode Island welcomes back one talented native this weekend, while another bids farewell to her native state -- at least for a while.
Pianist Kimberly Harrison, who's been living in Europe in recent years, is back in Providence for a month visiting friends and family. Saturday evening, she and her Dutch-born pianist husband, Sebastiaan Oosthout, share the stage at the Music Mansion for a program of duets and solo pieces.
Then Sunday afternoon, Warwick mezzo Valerie Nicolosi gives a recital at St. Luke's Church in East Greenwich before heading off for a two-year residency with the Knoxville Opera.
It's been about five years since Harrison last performed in Rhode Island. Since then, she earned a graduate degree in Germany, got married and started a family. She and her husband are based in the Dutch town of Nijmegen, where they run a small music school.
While Harrison and Oosthout have made music together ever since meeting a decade ago at New England Conservatory, it's only been in the last year or so that they've honed their duo act.
Performing together -- as well as living together as husband and wife -- was almost too much to handle, said Harrison from the East Side home of her mother, Lorraine Palumbo. "For most people, if you don't like what's going on at work you can come home and complain to your husband. You can't do that when you work together."
But they have learned to build on one another's stengths, said Harrison. She's an expert in contemporary music; he's a fan of the Romantic era.
"We found that playing together wasn't such a disaster, after all," Harrison said.
Doors to the Music Mansion open at 6 p.m., and the recital starts at 6:30 p.m. Harrison and Oosthout will each play solo selections from Liszt's
Years of Pilgrimage,
then team up for duos by Schubert and Brahms. Tickets are $15 and available at Chez-Nous Salon, 837 Hope St. Call 861-8887.
Nicolosi's farewell
Valerie Nicolosi will be serenading her fans and supporters Sunday in a program dubbed
The People I Love,
a select group that includes her teacher, Metropolitan Opera soprano Maria Spacagna, and St. Luke's music director Priscilla Rigg. Nicolosi has been Rigg's assistant for the past year.
"She's got all the chutzpah needed for the stage," said Rigg. "The kids love her. Everyone in the choir wants to be an opera singer now."
Nicolosi, a die-hard Rhode Islander with clam chowder coursing through her veins, has been content singing with regional houses around the country for a month or so, then returning to Warwick. Recent appearances have included leading and supporting roles with the Lake George Opera, Augusta Opera, Shreveport Opera and Rhode Island's own Ocean State Lyric Opera: She sang Mercedes in OSLO's
Carmen
last fall.
But a two-year residency at the Knoxville Opera, where she'll be singing three main
-
stage roles, plus a full scholarship for a graduate degree at the University of Tennessee was hard to resist.
"It's an amazing opportunity," said Nicolosi, who turned 29 on Monday. "At this point in my career, I can't afford to leave the stage for two years to get a master's. This way I can keep singing."
The Portsmouth native, who grew up playing the piano and taking acting classes, didn't get into opera until she went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.
"I didn't know anything about opera," said Nicolosi. "But before I knew it, I had fallen into the trap."
But two years of study in the Netherlands shattered her confidence and left Nicolosi uncertain about her future. She was ready to quit singing altogether.
"It was a case of too many people trying to fix something that wasn't really broken," she said.
She turned to Spacagna for guidance: Was she crazy to continue singing? When Spacagna heard her, she "almost fell off her chair," recalled Nicolosi. "Let's get you back on stage," Nicolosi quotes Spacagna as saying.
Two months later, Nicolosi was appearing with Maine's Portland Opera Repertory Theater.
To express her thanks at Sunday's concert, Nicolosi plans to sing Richard Struass's
Zueignung,
a song filled with feelings of gratitude. Songs by Schubert, Brahms, Rossini, Faure, Debussy, Copland, Barber and Tchaikovsky, will round out the afternoon along with a Rodgers and Hammerstein set. Audience members will be encouraged to call out the titles of the Broadway selections. Those who name that tune will get signs reading "You Were Right."
"People like to call me an entertainer," said Nicolosi. "I try to get the audience involved."
Time will tell whether the Knoxville residency serves as a springboard for Nicolosi's career. One thing is certain, though: She has no plans to abandon her home state.
"I'll never leave Rhode Island," she said. "The first thing I said to my boyfriend after getting off the plane from Texas [where she sang Cherubino in
The Marriage of Figaro
with Abilene Opera] is, 'Get me some clamcakes.' "
Nicolosi sings Sunday at 4 p.m. at St. Luke's Church, 99 Pierce St., East Greenwich. There is no charge, but donations will be taken at intermission to "defray educational expenses." Call 884-5517.
Festival closes
Meanwhile, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, led by violinist David Kim, comes to a close tomorrow night with music by Boccherini, Brahms and Schumann, the composer's masterful E-Flat Major Piano Quartet.
The performance takes place at 8 p.m. in the University of Rhode Island's Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $15, $5 for students with ID. Call 789-0665.
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