Coming up on Philly music: Lyric Fest goes operatic

Lyric Fest normally concentrates on small-scale art-song programs presented in smallish chamber-music settings. It's presenting something different for its 15th season finale: a concert by tenor Brian Hymel and soprano Irini Kyriakidou, a pair of international opera stars enjoying dream careers. Lyric Fest’s accompanist, pianist Laura Ward, predicts Hymel and Kyriakidou will “raise the roof with their glorious singing,” and Lyric Fest has scheduled the concert in a large venue suitable for roof-raising operatic voices: the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square.

Personal relationships crisscross the concert. The program originated last season in Hymel’s hometown, New Orleans, where the two stars designed the performance with their friend Ward. The new piece on the program, Chansons de Diane, is the product of a close collaboration between the performers and Lyric Fest’s composer-in-residence, Benjamin C.S. O’Boyle. O’Boyle joined Kyriakidou and Hymel in Paris last summer and worked on the piece with them. O’Boyle took his text from poems by Baudelaire and he describes it as a dialogue between the adoring poet and the “beautiful ... virginal, war-like and lethal” Greek goddess Diana.

From Vaughan Williams to Verdi

The program will offer more than assaults on the rafters. The two stars are also noted for their nuanced work with less flamboyant material. The first half will open with Vaughan Williams’s Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola, and Piano (with Metropolitan Opera violist Mark Holloway). Kyriakidou will contribute Ravel’s Five Popular Greek Melodies sung in her native language. The roof raising will come in the second half with arias and duets from the heroic repertoire that has become one of Hymel’s specialties. The menu includes two duets that have become perennial favorites with opera audiences, the love duet from the first act of Verdi’s Otello and the Cherry Duet from Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz.

Lyric Fest presents Bryan Hymel and Irini Kyriakidou in concert with pianist Laura Ward on Sunday, May 6, at 3pm at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Tickets ($35) are available online and at the door. Priority seating, including a post-show reception with the artists at the Academy of Vocal Arts, is available for $150.