TOLEDO, OH — The Toledo Symphony, part of Live Arts Toledo, is proud to present a transcendent evening of orchestral and vocal artistry on Saturday, November 22, 2025, at 8:00pm at The Peristyle. Under the baton of Music Director Alain Trudel, the program features internationally celebrated soprano Angela Meade performing a sweeping array of works by Richard Strauss, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Richard Wagner.
The Music
The evening’s program brings together three towering voices of the Romantic era, each offering a different lens on longing, fate, and transcendence. Richard Strauss opens the concert with Death and Transfiguration, an expansive tone poem that traces a soul’s final journey with music that moves from struggle to radiant release. Angela Meade then joins the orchestra for Strauss’s Four Last Songs, his serene and deeply felt farewell to life, sung with the lush intimacy the work demands. Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido follows an electrifying concert aria that pits heartbreak against fiery orchestral gesture. The night concludes with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a sweeping meditation on desire and destiny whose final pages remain among the most transcendent in all of classical music.
This performance marks the third concert in the Rita Barbour Kern Masterworks Series for the 2025–26 season.
Soprano Angela Meade
Angela Meade stands among the most celebrated American sopranos of her generation, revered for her opulent tone, remarkable agility, and commanding dramatic presence. Her career launched spectacularly with a surprise Metropolitan Opera debut in 2008, stepping in as Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani, a breakthrough that marked her arrival as a major operatic voice.
A graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, Meade has earned more than 50 prestigious vocal competition prizes, including the Richard Tucker Award (2011) and the Beverly Sills Artist Award from the Metropolitan Opera (2012). She has since become a leading interpreter of the great heroines of Strauss, Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti, and Wagner, praised for singing that is both “opulent and precise.”
Besides her Toledo Symphony debut, Meade’s 2025–26 season includes several marquee engagements that underscore her stature on the world stage. She appears at the Opéra National de Paris in February 2026 as Amelia in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, a signature Verdi role and a major European highlight. Later in the season, she takes on one of opera’s most formidable assignments: the title role in Puccini’s Turandot with The Atlanta Opera, and as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s season-long Turandot performances in New York.
Meade’s artistry brings a rare combination of vocal brilliance, emotional depth, and dramatic intuition. Her appearance with the Toledo Symphony offers Northwest Ohio audiences the chance to experience one of today’s most sought-after sopranos performing at the height of her artistic powers.
Why this Program Matters
“This is a program about transcendence,” says Toledo Symphony Music Director, Alain Trudel. “Strauss and Wagner speak to us about love, loss, longing, and ultimately transformation. This is also a very special opportunity to hear one of the world’s leading singers in excerpts from Beethoven’s only opera. Angela Meade brings her exceptional voice and expressive artistry to this music, and together with our wonderful musicians, creates a moment of deep humanity. I believe people will walk away reminded that even in our most vulnerable moments, there is profound beauty and strength to be found.”
Performance Details
- Date & Time: Saturday, November 22, 2025 at 8:00pm
- Location: The Peristyle, Toledo Museum of Art
- Box Office: 419-246-8000
- Tickets: Available now at liveartstoledo.com/meade
***
About The Toledo Symphony Orchestra
The Toledo Symphony Orchestra is a community-supported organization of professional musicians and teachers who deliver quality performance and music education for all. Formed in 1943 as The Friends of Music and incorporated in 1951 as the Toledo Orchestra Association, Inc., the Toledo Symphony Orchestra (TSO) has grown from a core group of twenty-two part-time musicians to a professional orchestra that employs seventy professional full-time musicians.
The Toledo Symphony reaches more than 260,000 individuals annually through performances and education programs. The series concerts (Masterworks, Pops, Chamber, and Family Series) are the critical underpinning of the orchestra’s artistic mission and regularly draw people from 135 postal zip codes. Education programs, student performances, and community concerts are held in schools, neighborhood churches, performing arts centers, and community facilities throughout the region; many are offered at no charge or provided at a reduced fee to help expand participation.
About Live Arts Toledo
Live Arts Toledo, formerly the Toledo Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA), is the region’s hub for live performance, cultural education, and community connection. Bringing together the Toledo Symphony, Toledo Ballet, Toledo Jazz Orchestra, Toledo Symphony School of Music, and Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestras, Live Arts Toledo presents more than 200 nights of programming each year, offering unforgettable experiences that stir the senses and strengthen the cultural fabric of Northwest Ohio.
Media Contact:
Emily McCready, Marketing Manager, 419.418.0027, emccready@liveartstoledo.com
