Minnesota Opera, Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers

September 2009

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Sept 28, 2009
“As Leïla, the virginal chanteuse-for-hire whose entanglements with tenor and baritone propel the plot, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian walked away with the evening's vocal honors. As agile as she is lyrical, Bayrakdarian can be expressive even when veiled and silent, and manages to seem vulnerable despite the utter security of her singing.”

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Gomidas Songs

Isabel's newest CD, "Gomidas Songs", on the Nonesuch Records label will be released on September 23.

Order online G-8 GLOBAL

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REMEMBRANCE CONCERT TOUR

On October 4, Isabel embarks on a North American "Remembrance Concert Tour" featuring the music of Armenian composer Gomidas, and dedicated to victims of all genocide. This tour is generously sponsored by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.

> Read the press release

Review of Tango Notturno

Opera News
September 2008

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is the latest classical artist to respond to the siren song of the tango with a CD compilation, and it's clear from the opening bars of the first track, Armenian composer Arno Babadjanian's "Tcheknagh Yeraz," that we'll be in good hands with her...

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Concert Review of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt

San Francisco Chronicle
by JOSHUA KOSMAN, Chronicle Music Critic

She was some kind of woman, that Cleopatra - bold, emotionally volatile and ultimately tragic (the asp thing). As embodied by the dynamic Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian on Thursday night, she ruled the stage of the Herbst Theatre as decisively as she once ruled ancient Egypt.

Bayrakdarian was the star of an imaginative program by Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra that featured excerpts from four 18th century operas based on this most irresistible of monarchs...

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Reviews of Carnegie Hall Recital

ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN | SEROUJ KRADJIAN
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York
March 8, 2008

NY Times
Soprano Returns, Bellini and Komitas in Tow
by ALLAN KOZINN

NY Sun
A Tour of Talent
By JAY NORDLINGER

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Reviews of Don Pasquale

Boulder Daily Camera
"Glory of the cast, of course, is the Norina of Canadian-Armenian Isabel Bayrakdarian, who makes easy kid stuff of the coloratura demands of the role. And bug’s-ear cute Bayrakdarian enters into the high-jinks spirit of the staging with obvious elan."

Denver Post
"Don Pasquale" is a hoot of a spaghetti Western opera
By KYLE MACMILLAN

Rocky Mountain News
'Don Pasquale' blazes trail through Monument Valley
By MARC SHULGOLD

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Review of Kansas City Recital

Kansas City Star
An Armenian at the Folly: Soprano sings the long line
By PAUL HORSLEY

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Tango Notturno

Tango Notturno
Isabel Bayrakdarian

For her latest recording for CBC RECORDS, the multi-talented Armenian-Canadian soprano ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN turns her versatile voice to the sultry and steamy world of Tango.

> More information about this CD

Nuages du Monde

Delerium
Nuages du Monde

“Angelicus”, featuring Isabel Bayrakdarian, was also released as a single and it reached #1 on the Billboard dance charts the week of March 18, 2007.

  > Watch the video on YouTube

> More information about this CD

Of nuns and hobbits

Chicago Sun-Times
March 11, 2007
BY LAURA EMERICK

Of nuns and hobbits

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is as comfortable in Middle-earth as she is on world opera stages

Though she won first prize in the 2000 Operalia competition (overseen by supertenor Placido Domingo), has sung in all the world's great opera houses (Covent Garden, La Scala, the Met) and has won multiple Juno Awards (Canada's equivalent of the Grammy), soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian might be best known to the world at large as a friend of Frodo.

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Reviews of Dialogues of the Carmelites

Chicago Sun-Times
"Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in her finest Chicago work to date...achieves a wonderful meeting of physical and vocal presence. We feel the range of her secular anxiety, religious questing, fear of death and fear of fear. Always lovely to hear and an intelligent actress, she reaches a new level here."

Chicago Tribune
"Isabel Bayrakdarian, with her full, gleaming soprano and fine musical intelligence, made an affecting Blanche. She conveyed the wounded-sparrow quality that made us care deeply about this fretful neurotic."

> Full reviews