Maayan Licht makes US debut with Tucson orchestra

So wild that when Los Angeles residents Simon Mason and Maria Rachko heard about Maayan Licht’s performance on Sunday with the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra, they hopped in their car and drove the eight or so hours.

It was their first-ever visit to Tucson.

Dozens of people who attended Licht’s two sold-out performances with SASO — the first one was Saturday at SaddleBrooke’s DesertView Performing Arts Center — had come from outside of Tucson. Some came from as nearby as the Phoenix area while others drove across the border from Mexico or made the cross-state trek from New Mexico.

If you ask Simon and Rachko, they will tell you it was worth the effort.

From that first note in his opening aria by Vivaldi, Licht’s virtuosic performance was nothing less than stunning. He took his range to impossible highs with gorgeous and sustained coloratura runs often punctuated with a humorous wink-wink as if he was letting us in on a joke.

It was the first time the audience had seen him live, but many were familiar with his immense and virtuosic talent courtesy of his impressive social media footprint. His TikTok videos of rehearsals and performances often get views in the millions; one he posted late last week of his rehearsal with SASO and Conductor Linus Lerner garnered more than 940,000 views as of Sunday.

That artistry and his larger-than-life stage presence were on full display Sunday at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in his “Sopranista Fireworks” program of Baroque arias — Cherubino’s fanciful “Voi che sapete” from Mozart’s comic opera “The Marriage of Figaro”; sustained coloratura runs in the “Gelosiz” aria from Vivaldi’s “Ottone in villa”; and Strauss’ “Morgan,” a lush and tender love song that Licht said he had never performed in concert before Tucson.

“I’m having so much fun,” he almost giggled as he described the horn duet that was part of Vivaldi's famous aria "Vedrò con mio diletto" “II Giustino.”

“This is the part that every horn player is scared of,” he said, turning to SASO hornist Jason Froggett. “Thank you for taking the challenge. Let’s hit it.”

Because women were not allowed to perform in public in Baroque times, most of the Baroque arias on “Sopranista Fireworks” were written for castrato boys, singers whose voices never changed after they were castrated as young as age 6, Licht told Sunday’s audience.

No, he clarified, he was not a castrato.

He did indulge us in one of the most famous female soprano arias: “Habanera” from Bizet’s famous tragic opera “Carmen.”

During his performance, Licht did a little tango-esque dance and winked seductively at the audience.

Sunday’s audience gave Licht a standing ovation mixed with a chorus of bravos and more than a few whistles and woot-woots. He returned the favor with a trio of encore numbers, including a duet with Lerner, a terrific baritone, of Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano” from “Don Giovanni.”

After the performance, Licht stuck around to meet audience members including Mason and Rachko, who said she had stumbled onto one of Licht’s videos a few weeks ago and was hooked.

“To me, it had the best sound and feel I had ever heard for the rare combination of voice and virtuoso technique,” said Rachko, who has long been a fan of Baroque music.

Rachko said she did a deep dive into Licht’s work and saw that he was performing in Tucson, “so I decided to make the trip for the rare chance to see his live performance.”

“It was absolutely worth it,” she said.

Licht’s concert opened SASO’s 2026-27 season, which includes the debut of the SASO Chorus.

The chorus will perform its first concert Oct. 24-25 at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. For the chorus’s schedule and tickets, visit sasomusic.org.