La Scala di Seta - 1996

History

We are pleased to present two very different operatic gems from the Italian repertory, Rossini’s The Silken Ladder and Puccini’s Suor Angelica. While separated by only slightly over 100 years, one represents a musical language familiar to Napoleon, and the other premiered when Woodrow Wilson was in the White House. With these two operas our students gain a very wide range of style, dramatically and musically. Thanks must go to the students in the Musical Theater Workshop and UCLA Chorale for their participation and support for their operatic colleagues.

We are also pleased to introduce Maestro Moustafa Nagui, Musical Director of the Cairo Opera, who conducts our students. This season, Maestro Nagui has also invited graduate students from UCLA to participate in professional productions at the Cairo Opera House, and we are proud to have our students participate in their productions of Aida and La Bohème.

These operas are produced witht the generous support of the Gluck Foundation whose interest in the Fine Arts extends from the artistic present to our artistic future by their belief in our young talent. Thank you. - Jon Robertson

Dr. Moustafa Nagui has conducted countless successful concerts and operas in Egypt and abroad. A talented Egyptian artist, he is also well known as a prominent cello soloist and composer, having received several prizes for musical scores at international film festivals. Maestro Nagui contributed to the inauguration of the Cairo Opera House in 1988 with his orchestrated AlGehad Anthem and Altyarann Anthem, originally composed by Egypt’s well known artist M. Abd Alwahab. As cellist he has recorded for Egyptian Radio and other foreign broadcasts and has presents recitals and symphonic concerts in Egypt, Germany, U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia, Italy, France, England, Austria, and the United States.

Nagui was born in Cairo in 1948, and studied at the Cairo Conservatory where he graduated in 1971 and was immediately appointed Assistant Professor for Cello. In 1972, he travelled to the former U.S.S.R. for further study in cello. In 1974, he was a contestant at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, receiving a Certificate of Recognition. In 1976, Nagui became the Resident Conductor of the Conservatory Orchestra, and four years later he founded the Alexandria Conservatory Orchestra.

In 1982, Nagui was appointed Resident Music Director for the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, and since 1990 he has been the Artistic General Director and the Chief Conductor at the National Cultural Center “Cairo Opera House.” In 1994, Dr. Nagui successfully founded the Cairo Opera Orchestra as a second orchestra to the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.