Dawn Upshaw Begins Cancer Treatment

NEW YORK (AP) -- Soprano Dawn Upshaw began treatment for early stage breast cancer Thursday, canceling her engagements through January 2007, her manager said.

Upshaw, 46, who had been scheduled to give a performance in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ayre" with the Kronos Quartet, was being treated in New York, said Alec Treuhaft, the singer's New York manager at IMG Artists. He declined to name the medical facility to protect her privacy.

Upshaw, a resident of Westchester County, received the diagnosis at the end of August, and had taken the time since then to decide her course of treatment, Treuhaft said.

She canceled several orchestra engagements in Europe at the end of August and early September after learning about her cancer.

"The doctors are so optimistic. She has a family history of the disease ... and because of it has been checked very religiously. That is one of the reasons doctors are very optimistic of the outcome," Treuhaft said.

He said Upshaw "intends to be back on the stage for a U.S. tour recital in mid-February."

Upshaw has canceled her appearance in the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho's new opera/oratorio, "La Passion de Simone," at the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna on Nov. 26-30. Finnish soprano Pia Freund will replace Upshaw, for whom Saariaho wrote the score's only solo role.

On Dec. 7-9, Upshaw had been scheduled to appear in Boston in John Adams's oratorio "El Nino" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under conductor David Robertson. Soprano Jessica Rivera will fill in for her.

The U.S. premiere of "La Passion de Simone" on Jan. 12-14, 2007, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will be postponed to the next season, and replaced with Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra and Mahler's Symphony No. 7.

Upshaw is scheduled to appear in "La Passion de Simone" at the Barbican Centre in London on July 10-12, 2007.

"She's great," Treuhaft said of Upshaw's outlook. "It didn't come as a surprise, out of the blue. She is approaching it in the same way that she approaches everything else -- calmly, thoughtfully."

The three-time Grammy winner is a member of the faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center and has designed a master's degree program in vocal arts at Bard College Conservatory of Music.