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Festival Orchestra Series

Festival Orchestra Finale: Night at the Opera

Friday, August 14 at 7:00 PM
Jackson Hole High School Auditorium

$40 – $75
children/students $5
The annual tradition of opera at the Grand Teton Music Festival continues with an evening of arias, duets and orchestral interludes from none other than Giacomo Puccini, featuring soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal.
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The annual tradition of opera at the Grand Teton Music Festival continues with an evening of arias, duets and orchestral interludes from none other than Giacomo Puccini, featuring soprano Eleni Calenos and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal. These two world-class voices join Maestro Runnicles and the Festival Orchestra in this aural feast of melody and drama, but not before we see Italy through the eyes of Felix Mendelssohn, who visited the country in 1830 and set down his impressions in both musical notes and vibrant watercolors.

program

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, “Italian”
Verdi: Selections from La traviata
Puccini: Selections from La bohème

Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor
Eleni Calenos, soprano
Daniel Luis Espinal, tenor

meet the artists


Soprano

Eleni Calenos
Soprano

Internationally acclaimed Greek soprano Eleni Calenos is capturing critics’ and audiences’ admiration for the clarity and warmth of her voice and her dignified characterizations.

Her operatic repertoire includes more than 30 roles, among them: Mimì (La bohème), Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), Tosca, Suor Angelica, Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana), Nedda (I Pagliacci), Giorgetta (Il tabarro), Liù (Turandot), Giulietta (Giulietta e Romeo by Zandonai), the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Hanna Glawari (The Merry Widow), Antonia (The Tales of Hoffmann), Desdemona (Otello), Medora (Il corsaro), Gilda (Rigoletto), L’Infante (Le Cid), Silvia (Zanetto), Micaëla (Carmen), Lia (L’Enfant prodigue), and Vee Talbot in Bruce Saylor’s contemporary opera Orpheus Descending. She also created the role of Saida in the world premiere of the opera Schönerland by S. N. Eichberg, on the topic of refugees.

Calenos is equally accomplished in the oratorio and concert repertoire, having sung Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, Handel’s Theodora, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Rutter’s Magnificat and Poulenc’s Gloria, among others.

She has collaborated with opera companies and symphony orchestras such as Glyndebourne, Wiesbaden Staatstheater, the Greek National Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Austin Opera, Tulsa Opera, Sarasota Opera, Opera Idaho, Opera Delaware, Opera Orlando, Shreveport Opera, Odyssey Opera, Mississippi Opera, Lancaster Symphony, MidAmerica Productions (Avery Fisher Hall/Lincoln Center), Opera Montana, Opera Santa Barbara, Orchestra Miami, Utah Festival Opera, Annapolis Opera, Madison Opera, Charlottesville Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Phoenicia Festival, Opera Company of Middlebury (VT), Evansville Philharmonic, LOFT Opera, Zomeropera (Belgium), the Athens State Symphony Orchestra, the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, the Athens Philharmonia Orchestra and the Eptapyrgion Festival.

Calenos graduated with a Cello Diploma from the Municipal Conservatory of her native Thessaloniki and a Diploma in Voice from the National Conservatory of Greece. She obtained her Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from Queens College, City University of New York, and a Performance Certificate from the Opera Institute of Boston University.

Her recordings include Mascagni’s Zanetto with Odyssey Opera, two operettas by Greek composer S. Samaras (War in War and The Cretan Girl) with the Greek National Opera, as well as George Tsontakis’s Mirologhia, released on the KOCH International Classics label with the Albany Symphony Orchestra.


Tenor

Daniel Luis Espinal
Tenor

Daniel Luis Espinal is a Cuban-Dominican tenor from Sarasota, Florida. He is currently in his second season as a member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he performed Third Jew (Salome) and Beppe (Pagliacci) in the 2025/26 season. He also appeared as Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. At Lyric Opera of Chicago, Espinal has previously appeared as Jaquino (Fidelio), and has covered Rodolfo (La bohème), Narraboth (Salome), and Borsa (Rigoletto). Additional operatic credits include Tom Rakewell (The Rake’s Progress), Rinuccio (Gianni Schicchi), Male Chorus (The Rape of Lucretia), and Tamino (Die Zauberflöte).

Espinal’s earliest musical experiences began singing in church choir, but it was through musical theater that he first discovered his artistic voice and love for performance. Those formative years continue to inform his communicative approach on stage, where vocal color, character and emotional immediacy are central to his work. He is recognized for the distinctive color of his voice and a natural charisma that belie his years.

A recent graduate of the Yale School of Music, Espinal is also an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music. He was a winner of the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, the Art Song Prize winner of the 2023 Duncan Williams Voice Competition, and a 2025 Sara Tucker Study Grant recipient. He is an alumnus of the prestigious Merola Opera Program and a participant in the Académie d’Aix-en-Provence.

Join us in the lobby at 6 PM for a Pre-Concert Talk, an inside look into the music led by GTMF violinist Hasse Borup. Talks are sponsored by the Goodman Family Foundation, in memory of Roy and Barbara Goodman.

sponsored in part by:
Teton Pines
details
Friday, August 14
7:00pm - 9:00pm
$40 – $75
children/students $5
organizer
Grand Teton Music Festival
307.733.1128
ticketoffice@gtmf.org
venue

Jackson Hole High School Auditorium
1910 High School Rd
Jackson, WY 83001 United States

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