(Credit: Devon Cass)

The Vallejo Center for the Arts has announced that the Empress Theater will reopen after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic with a special concert featuring Canadian-American dramatic soprano Othalie Graham.

The concert, which will take place on January 15, 2022, will be dedicated to the great German composer Richard Wagner. Graham will perform dramatic arias from Wagner’s masterpieces such as “Tannhäuser” and “Die Walküre”, as well as the famous Liebestod from “Tristan und Isolde”. The orchestra will also perform excerpts from “Tannhäuser”, “Die Walküre”, “Lohengrin”, “Tristan und Isolde”, “Der Fliegende Holländer” and “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”.

Thomas Conlin conducts the Vallejo Festival Orchestra.

“Wagner can be counted on, perhaps more than any other composer, to deliver the goosebumps factor. It will be an evening you will not soon forget, ”Maestro Conlin said in an official press release.

Othalie Graham is a well-known soprano who has performed with such prestigious companies as the Teatro di San Carlo, Málaga, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Chorus at the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Gran Teatro Nacional del Perú, Edmonton Opera, Opera Carolina, Arizona Opera, Michigan Opera Theater and Nashville Opera. The soprano is scheduled to perform the role of Santuzza in Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” at the Vancouver Opera in February 2022, before taking on the role of Freia in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” at the Nashville Opera in May 2022.