Screenshot of a marketing image for this summer’s Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra tour in Europe and the U.S.
“The Metropolitan Opera and the Polish National Opera are organizing a Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra to tour Europe and America from July 28 to Aug. 20,” reads an unsigned Associated Press report on Monday (4/25). “The orchestra is to gather in Warsaw on July 18 for rehearsals, and will include musicians from Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Odessa, plus Ukrainian members of European orchestras…. Keri-Lynn Wilson, a Canadian-Ukrainian conductor who is married to Met general manager Peter Gelb, will lead musicians who include members of the Kyiv National Opera, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and Kharkiv Opera, plus the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Vienna, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The tour will open at … the Polish National Opera, on July 28 and include a televised performance at the BBC Proms in London on July 31. That will be followed by … [Orange, France] … Berlin… Edinburgh … Snape Maltings in England … Amsterdam … Hamburg … New York … and Washington…. Programs will include Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Seventh Symphony, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Ukrainian Anna Fedorova, either Brahms’ Fourth Symphony or Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, and Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in ‘Abscheulicher!’ from Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio.’ ”
