2022 Deer Valley Music Festival: López sings Barber and Mozart

Mexican-American Idaho native Cecilia Violetta López, whom The New York Times praised for her “bright, expressive voice,” makes her festival debut singing an aria from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a nostalgic look back at the lazy summer evenings of childhood.

Opening the concert is A Collection of Sand, depicting our modern world and the pervasive noises we sort through and prioritize in life. The evening concludes with Louise Farrenc’s “shamelessly neglected” (The Guardian) Third Symphony. Farrenc, admired by Schumann and Berlioz, was influenced by Beethoven’s non-conformity and created her own distinctive musical voice—while also requesting, and winning, equal pay as the lone female faculty member at the Paris Conservatoire.