El Niño
Participatory Concerts
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Date
- 18:00 / Cancelled 18:00 / Sold out Saturday, 18:00
- 18:00 / Cancelled 18:00 / Sold out Sunday, 18:00
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationPricing
- 20,00 € – 36,00 €
Single tickets
Online priority booking (Cartão Gulbenkian Mais): 29 Jun, 10:00
Online booking: 30 Jun, 10:00
25% – Under 30
10% – Over 65
Cartão Gulbenkian:
50% – Under 30
20% – Over 65
10% – 30 to 65
- Participatory Choir
- Coro Infantil da Academia de Música de Santa Cecília
- Conductor
- Eduarda Melo Soprano
- Kelley O’Connor Mezzo-Soprano
- Baritone
- João Pedro Azevedo Countertenor
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Gulbenkian Choir
Coro Gulbenkian was founded in 1964 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as a full symphonic body of around 100 singers. The choir joins the Orquestra Gulbenkian and other orchestras to perform Classical, Romantic and Contemporary choral-symphonic repertoire, but can also perform a cappella. It has performed – and often premiered – many 20th century works by Portuguese and international composers.
Coro Gulbenkian has been invited to collaborate with major international orchestras, under the direction of conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Colin Davis, John Nelson, Emmanuel Krivine, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Frans Brüggen, Franz Welser-Möst, Gerd Albrecht, Michael Gielen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, René Jacobs and Leonard Slatkin, among others.
Besides its regular season of concerts in Lisbon and frequent national tours, Coro Gulbenkian has repeatedly toured Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Macao, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Uruguay.
Coro Gulbenkian has recorded extensively for Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, Cascavelle, Musifrance, as well as FNAC-Music, performing a wide range of repertoire, from Early-Renaissance polyphony to Xenakis. Several of these albums received international awards.
Michel Corboz was the Principal Conductor between 1969 and 2019. Jorge Matta and Inês Tavares Lopes are currently the Associate and Assistant conductors, respectively.
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Gulbenkian Orchestra
In 1962, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation decided to establish a permanent orchestral ensemble. Originally with only twelve musicians (strings and continuo) it was named “Orquestra de Câmara Gulbenkian”. This collective was successively enlarged and today the “Orquestra Gulbenkian” (the name it has adopted since 1971) has a permanent body of sixty instrumentalists, a number that can be expanded depending on the repertoire.
This structure allows the Gulbenkian Orchestra to interpret works from the Baroque and Classical periods, a significant part of 19th century orchestral literature and much of the music of the 20th century, including works belonging to the current repertoire of the traditional symphonic orchestras. In each season, the orchestra performs on a regular series of concerts at the Gulbenkian Grand Auditorium in Lisbon, where it has had the opportunity of working together with some of leading names of the world of music (conductors and soloists). It has also performed on numerous locations all over Portugal, in an effort to decentralize music and culture.
The orchestra has been constantly expanding its activities in the international level, performing in Europe, Asia Africa, and the Americas. In the recording field, Orquestra Gulbenkian is associated to labels as Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Teldec, Erato, Adès, Nimbus, Lyrinx, Naïve and Pentatone, among others, and this activity was recognized with several international prizes.
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Joana Carneiro
Conductor
Joana is in high demand across the globe, particularly for her focus on contemporary music both in the concert hall and on the opera stage. Most recently she returned to London’s Coliseum with the English National Opera for their premiere of Thea Musgraves’ Mary, Queen of Scots. This followed her work on the revival of The Handmaid’s Tale, which she originally premiered in 2022. Prior to that, together with the English National Opera, she brought to light the world stage premiere of John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, directed by Peter Sellars. With Scottish Opera Joana conducted Nixon in China at the Theatre Royal Glasgow and at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre. In the recent seasons she also conducted Rake´s Progress at Lisbon’s Teatro Nacional de São Carlos. Other recent opera performances include A Wonderful Town (Royal Danish Opera), Simone's La Passion (Ojai Festival), Oedipus Rex (Sydney, Helpmann Award for Best Concert by the Symphony Orchestra) and A Flowering Tree (Vienna, Paris, Chicago, Cincinnati, Gothenburg, Lisbon). In 2023, Joana conducted the premiere of the ballet production Pit by Bobbi Jene Smith at the Opera Garnier in Paris.
Symphonic highlights of Joana’s 2025/26 symphonic season include debuts with the Baltimore Symphony, Finnish Radio, Basque National Orchestra and return collaborations with Gulbenkian Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Helsingborg Symphony, Musikkollegium Winterthur and the National Arts Center orchestra in Ottawa.
Most recently Joana concluded a four-year tenure as Principal Guest Conductor of the Real Filharmonia de Galicia. Joana was Principal Conductor of the Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa at Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon from 2014 until January 2022. She is currently artistic director of the Gulbenkian Youth Orchestra, a post she has held since 2013.
Over the years, Joana has established a strong connection with many prominent orchestras across Europe, including BBC Symphony, BBC Scottish, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Philharmonia in London, the Royal Scottish National, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Vienna Radio Symphony, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Castilla y Leon Symphony Orchestra and La Venice among many others. In the US in the past seasons Joana has collaborated with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony and Naples Philharmonic in the United States. Further afield Joana has collaborated with Hong Kong Philharmonic, Beijing Orchestra in China and Sao Paulo State Symphony in Brazil.
A native of Lisbon, she began her musical studies as a violist before receiving her conducting degree from the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon, where she studied with Jean-Marc Burfin. In the United States she received her master’s degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University as a student of Victor Yampolsky and Mallory Thompson, and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Kenneth Kiesler.
Joana was a finalist of the prestigious 2002 Maazel-Vilar Conductor’s Competition at Carnegie Hall, then in 2003-04, she worked with Maestros Kurt Masur and Christoph von Dohnanyi and conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as one of the three conductors chosen for London’s Allianz Cultural Foundation International Conductors Academy. From 2002 to 2005, Joana served as Assistant Conductor of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra and as Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles then from 2005 through 2008, she was an American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she worked closely with Esa-Pekka Salonen and led several performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl.
Joana is the 2010 recipient of the Helen M. Thompson Award, conferred by the League of American Orchestras to recognize and honour music directors of exceptional promise. In 2004, Joana was decorated by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Mr. Jorge Sampaio, with the Commendation of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique. In spring 2024, Joana became a member of the council of state of Republic of Portugal.
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André Baleiro
Baritone
André Baleiro is the winner of the 17th International Robert Schumann Competition (Zwickau, 2016), the 9th Portuguese Rotary Foundation Vocal Competition (Lisbon, 2016), and the Most Promising Talent Prize at the prestigious International DAS LIED Competition (Heidelberg, 2017), as well as the SWR Young Opera Stars Competition (Kaiserslautern, 2019). He was awarded Second Prize at both the Helmut Deutsch International Lied Competition (Vienna, 2021) and the Schubert and Modern Music International Chamber Music Competition (Graz, 2022).
On the operatic stage, he has stood out with his interpretations of PELLÉAS (Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy), VALENTIN (Faust, Gounod), FORD (Falstaff, Verdi), ORPHÉE (Philip Glass), TARQUINIUS (The Rape of Lucretia) and NED KEEN (Peter Grimes, Britten), as well as FIGARO (Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini), performing in venues such as the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, the Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, the Munich Kammeroper, the Teatro Pérez Galdós in Las Palmas, Theater Trier in Germany, and the Wrocław Opera in Poland.
His broad concert repertoire includes Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, J. S. Bach’s Passions, Handel’s oratorios, Mozart and Dvořák Masses, Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ, Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem, the Requiems of Fauré, Duruflé and Brahms, Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, Schönberg’s Gurrelieder, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.
He has collaborated with conductors such as Michel Corboz, Stefan Blunier, Frédéric Chaslin, Graeme Jenkins, Antonio Pirolli, Joana Carneiro, Nabil Shehata, Lorenzo Viotti, Dinis Sousa, Nuno Coelho, Peter Dijkstra, and Jonathan Bloxham.
He regularly performs in recital with various pianists, presenting a repertoire spanning a wide range of languages, styles, and periods. Notable among these are his long-standing collaborations with João Paulo Santos and David Santos. He also has a strong focus on modern and contemporary vocal music, having worked on several occasions with the Liederwerkstatt project led by Axel Bauni at the Kissinger Sommer Festival in Germany, where he premiered new works for voice and piano by composers such as Steffen Schleiermacher, Manfred Trojahn, and Luca Lombardi.
André Baleiro studied Voice at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin under baritone Siegfried Lorenz, and deepened his Lied repertoire with Eric Schneider. He has attended masterclasses with renowned singers such as Tom Krause, Ian Bostridge, Lorenzo Regazzo, and José van Dam.
He is currently continuing his technical and artistic development with Snežana Stamenković. In 2025, André Baleiro performed the baritone part in Britten’s War Requiem and the role of Faust in Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust at Teatro Camões in Lisbon. He also portrayed Miller in Verdi’s Luisa Miller at the Luzern Theatre (Switzerland).
Upcoming engagements include song recitals at the Espinho Auditorium, the Centro Cultural de Belém, the Marvão International Music Festival, and the Alcobaça Festival, featuring Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
John Adams
The Grand Auditorium once again hosts the Participatory Concerts, an occasion in which amateur choristers join the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra in the performance of a major work from the repertoire. This season, the chosen work is the opera-oratorio El Niño by American composer John Adams. The work retells the story of the nativity of Jesus Christ, drawing on the biblical narrative described in the Gospels, while also incorporating apocryphal texts and poems by a wide variety of Spanish and Latin American authors. The performance will be conducted by Joana Carneiro.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.