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Lidia Fridman first worked with Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Emeritus for Life, on two opera productions during the 2023/24 Season, and she has become something of a regular with him since.
That collaboration continues currently with the fast-rising, 30-year-old Russian soprano starring through March 7 as the scheming Lady Macbeth in a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth in Turin, Italy, led by Muti.
“Working with Maestro Muti is an extraordinary experience,” Fridman said. “He has an incredible knowledge of the repertoire and a really deep respect for the composer, and his work is extremely precise, so every rehearsal is a real learning experience.”
Then, less than two weeks later, Fridman will join Muti again as he leads the CSO in three performances of a program the ensemble is billing as An Opera Night with Riccardo Muti, because the entire line-up is devoted to excerpts from great Italian operas.
The set of concerts March 19-21 will be her first with the CSO, but it’s something more, as she was quick to point out. “It’s also my debut in the United States,” the soprano said, “which makes it even more meaningful. Performing with such a prestigious orchestra is a great honor. I’m very much looking forward to meeting the audience.”
Fridman will be featured for the first time anywhere in the famed aria, “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from Alfredo Catalini’s 1892 opera, La Wally. It was Muti’s idea for her to sing it, and she was happy to oblige because the conductor knows her voice so well.
The concert will culminate with act 4 from Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, when Fridman will join Francesco Meli, another Muti favorite. Meli will also be heard in the aria, “Amor ti vieta” from Umberto Giordano’s 1898 Fedora.
The rest of the program will feature the orchestra alone or with the Chicago Symphony Chorus in another excerpt from Manon Lescaut and sections from five additional Verdi operas, including I Masnadieri, Macbeth and Nabucco.
“The orchestra and choir pieces are really great,” Fridman said, “so I think it will be a great night.”
“It’s also my debut in the United States,” the soprano said, “which makes it even more meaningful. Performing with such a prestigious orchestra is a great honor.”
A native of Samara, a city in southwestern Russia at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, Fridman began piano lessons when she was 6. But later, some of her teachers recognized her vocal talent and encouraged her to pursue singing.
After graduating from a local high school of the arts, she earned her undergraduate degree in vocal performance from the Samara Music College. “I come from a family of doctors where no one in my family studied music, so choosing this path was not obvious,” Fridman said.
For more advanced vocal studies, the soprano decided to take a leap. So, when she was 19, she moved to Italy, spending three years at the Tomadini Conservatory of Music in Udine and then moving on to the Conservatory of Music “Benedetto Marcello” in Venice. In her mind, Italy was a “natural place” to study opera because the country was the cradle of the form.
She picked the school in Venice for her final preparation because it had an opera studio and offered opportunities for stage experience. While she was there, she made her debut in 2019 in the lead role in baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni’s opera, La Statira, at Venice’s celebrated opera house, La Fenice.
It was an auspicious beginning for the upstart singer, and she has gone on to appear in some of the most famous concert halls and opera houses of Europe, including La Monnaie in Brussels, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Festival Verdi in Parma and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.
Through it all, Fridman has chosen to keep her residence in the City of Canals. “I really love Venice, and I have my teacher in Venice, so I live there,” she said.
Fridman is a dramatic bel canto soprano, marrying vocal power with agility and expressiveness. In addition to 18th- and 19th-century operas by Italian bel canto operas by composers like Gaetano Donizetti, she also performs many roles in Verdi operas as well as some by Richard Strauss and Alban Berg.
“I am very careful with my repertoire, because it’s essential to respect the natural evolution of the voice,” she said.
Fridman has almost exclusively performed in either operas or orchestral concerts like the set she is doing in Chicago, but on March 12, she will present a solo recital at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. “This concert in Rome, it’s my first big recital, so I’m very excited,” she said.
Featured will be the Wesendonck Lieder, a famous set of five art songs by Richard Wagner, as well as selections by a range of several other composers including Richard Strauss and Sergei Rachmaninov.
“I really enjoy recitals very much,” Fridman said. “They allow a more direct and more intimate connection with the audience and offers a different kind of artistic freedom. So, I do not perform solo concerts very often but I find them really enriching.”
