Biography - Page 4
Long an orchestral player as well as a soloist, Ms. Chapuis Starr serves as Principal Flute of the Orchestra of Opera San José. (She has occupied that chair since Opera San José was founded in 1983 by General Director Irene Dalis. In that time, Ms. Chapuis Starr has given innumerable performances of 65 operas covering virtually the entire standard operatic repertoire. As Principal Flute, she is responsible for all the famous flute solos in operas such as Lucia di Lamermoor, Carmen, The Magic Flute, Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, etc.)
From
1975-1985, Ms. Chapuis Starr served as Principal Flute in numerous chamber
orchestra concerts with
the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, under Music Director Edgar
Braun. And s
Ms. Chapuis Starr has introduced a substantial number of new works by contemporary composers. The Portrait No. 3 by American composer John Downey is dedicated to her. She introduced John Corigliano's Voyage in a new version for flute and piano to Canadian audiences. In 1989, she gave the first American performance of Antiphysis, for flute/piccolo and orchestra by the French composer Hugues Dufour with the Berkeley Symphony. This challenging work employs new avant-garde techniques for the flute developed by French flutist Pierre-Yves Artaud. In 1993, she performed new works at SJSU by American composer Mario Davidowsky of Harvard University in a concert marking Davidowsky's appointment to the Harvard faculty. And in 1994, she performed several chamber works by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina in the presence of the composer in a concert at SJSU.
Many critics have hailed Ms. Chapuis Starr’s concerts. After Ms. Chapuis Starr’s San Francisco debut concert in 1975, music critic Marilyn Tucker wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Isabelle Chapuis is a flute soloist new to San Francisco who caused a sensation. A former pupil of Jean-Pierre Rampal, she is French to her fingertips. She lit up the hall with a vivacious version of Mozart's Flute Concerto in D Major, performing with a surety and technical mastery that recalled the virtues of her famous teacher." Some years later, the critic of the Palo Alto Times described her playing as "phenomenal." And more recently, the critic of the San Francisco Examiner wrote: “Chapuis provided phenomenal breath control, tonal variety and bravura to spare."
In
1991, Ms. Chapuis Starr was honored in her hometown of Dijon. After performing a
flute/piano recital with American pianist Jane Hesselgesser in the historic Salle des États of the Palais des Ducs--a
recital which
the music critic of the newspaper Les Depêches de Dijon described as "an
extraordinary artistic event that brings back vivid memories of several great French flutists
of past generations," the Conservatoire national de musique de Dijon
renamed its competitive scholarship in flute in her honor: le Prix d'Isabelle Chapuis.