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Your "lyric theater" program

with Keith Brown

programming selections

for the months of May and June, 2014 

Sunday 1-4:30pm

 

 

 

SUNDAY MAY 4TH
Stravinsky,Le Rossignol,Mavra,Grieg,Haugtussa
When we think of Spring, we immediately think of birds singing. Let that be my seasonal point of departure in this two-month round of programming. The most renowned of songbirds has got to be the nightingale. There's a symphonic poem by Igor Stravinsky called Le Chant du Rossignol ("The Song of the Nightingale," 1917), but before that its music was incorporated into a little opera,Stravinsky's first,Le Rossignol (1914). Its Russian language libretto is based upon a fairy tale of Hans Christian Anderson. The bird sings for the Emperor of China, who is charmed by its song, but ultimately he rejects the real bird and its song in favor of a mechanical nightingale. The real bird ends up saving the foolish emperor's life, then returns to Nature. Stravinsky was the best conductor of his own music. He directed the Chorus and Orchestra of the Opera Society of Washington, DC when the "lyric tale" in three short acts was recorded. In 1991 Sony Classical gathered together and reissued in CD format so many of the recordings Stravinsky had made of his own compositions for release on Columbia LP's back in the 1960's. Le Rossignol came in Vol. VIII of Sony's Stravinsky edition. In that same volume were 35 of Stravinsky's orchestrated songs and a mini-opera buffa in Russian language: Mavra (1922). The Russian author Pushkin supplied the tale of a young suitor who disguises himself as a serving maid in  order to sneak into the house of his beloved. The girl's mother discovers the ruse and the boy jumps out a window to escape. For Mavra Stravinsky led the CBC Symphony Orchestra with a cast of four singers.
    There's time remaining to listen to the songs of the Norwegian Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Particularly appealing are the eight songs that comprise the Haugtussa song cycle, Op. 67 (1897). Grieg worked on more than eight of the lyrics among the 71 poems in Arne Garborg's Haugtussa collection. These poems recount the wanderings of the visionary girl Veslemoy in the wild uplands of Southwestern Norway. Grieg's musical depictions of the landscape reveal him to be a nature mystic like his younger English colleague Frederick Delius. Mezzo-soprano Monica Groop is heard in the Haugtussa songs. You'll hear more of Grieg's songs as she interpreted them in a 1993 Swedish BIS label release,one of several BIS CD's that present the complete corpus of Grieg's vocal pieces with piano accompaniment. Thanks to Ira Braus, keyboard instructor at the Hartt School, for his programming suggestion.
                                          SUNDAY MAY 11TH
Handel,Semele
Is George Frideric Handel's Semele (1744) a "secular oratorio" or is it an opera in disguise? Handel gave up writing Italian opere serie for the London stage in 1741. In preserving his Italianate style in Semele, Handel created what is arguably the first great English opera. Its hit song "Where'er You Walk," has been a vocal soloist's vehicle for generations, but the complete work has been infrequently performed or recorded. That's difficult to understand, because the splendid choral numbers certainly recommend it for performance by choral societies. Perhaps it was the story, taken from the Latin poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, which seemed rather silly. The Restoration dramatist William Congreve gave a comic treatment to the love triangle between the mortal maiden Semele, the goddess Juno and her divine philandering husband Jupiter. Handel wrought wonders in bringing Congreve's verse to life. Baroque specialist John Eliot Gardiner put in a fine interpretation of Handel's score, with only a couple of cuts. Gardiner directed his own period instrumental ensemble, the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. The  1981 studio taping found its way onto two Erato compact discs in 1993. Gardiner's Semele went over the air on Sunday,June 1,2008. Another fine recording of Semele is the one with Johannes Somary conducting the English Chamber Orchestra and Amor Artis Chorale. The cast of vocal soloists included the best English singers of the time. Released in 1973,it was available in the US on Vanguard LP's. It was reissued in CD format in 2007 through another later American label Alto/Musical Concepts. In this recording Semele is soprano Sheila Armstrong, Juno contralto Helen Watts and tenor Robert Tear is Jupiter. Somary's interpretation is historically informed, although the instrumentalists don't play baroque period instruments. The continuo keyboard stylings of Harold Lester, playing harpsichord and organ,are particularly noteworthy. Somary also gives us Handel's complete score.

SUNDAY MAY 18TH
McCartney,Liverpool Oratorio
Paul McCartney of Beatles fame decided to accept the commission to compose something for the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society,partly in order to force himself to master the system of Western musical notation. A natural, if unlettered musician from the first, he had never actually learned to read or write music properly until circa 1989,when he began work on the Liverpool Oratorio (1991). The oratorio deals in part with the story of Paul's life in the city of his birth: coming into the world in wartime, his schooldays, his parents and meeting his wife Linda. Carl Davis, then the conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, acted as Paul's mentor in the composition of this monumental work for full orchestra, five vocal soloists (one of whom is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa), adult choir and the boy choristers of Liverpool Cathedral. (As a lad Paul auditioned to be a chorister there, but was turned down.) The Liverpool Oratorio was recorded in the cathedral live in performance. Carl Davis conducted the Royal Liverpool Phil. And Choir. McCartney himself produced the recording for EMI. I broadcast the two EMI silver discs on Sunday, November 22,1992. It's worthy of note that Sir Paul's oratorio has over the years come to be considered a "classic," and certainly all those memorable pop tunes he wrote have also become classics,too, in their own way. Liverpool  Oratorio has been reissued in the EMI Classics line. I work from the two-CD reissue today.

SUNDAY MAY 25TH   
Britten, War Requiem has gone over the air on this program twice before on the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend (Sundays May 29,1988 and May 27,1990.) The memorial behind Britten's requiem has more to do with the Armistice ending World War One on November 11,1918. That's why I last broadcast it on Sunday, November 6,2005. Britten was a pacifist. He declined to fight in World War Two. The poetry of Wilfred Owen,killed at the tender age of 25 just before the Armistice, served as a constant reminder to Britten of the horror and futility of war. "All a poet can do is warn," so Wilfred Owen wrote. Britten's settings of his poems are a ghastly, monumental musical warning to the world of what war should have taught us, but which it seems we still refuse to learn. Owen's verse is interwoven with the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead. Britten's War Requiem was recorded for the British Decca/London record label shortly after its concert premiere with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the London Bach Choir, Melos Ensemble and Highgate School boys' choir, with distinguished vocal soloists of fully half a century ago. In the lineup are Britten's longtime lover and musical partner tenor Peter Pears, German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. Again this Sunday you'll hear the Decca CD reissue of that defining 1963 recorded interpretation.

SUNDAY JUNE 1ST  
Verdi,Rigoletto
This is the one Verdi opera that,surprisingly, I have never previously broadcast in the three decades I've handled the Sunday afternoon timeslot. What you'll hear today is an historic recording of Rigoletto (1851), recorded live in performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, February 22,1964. This is actually an airtape of a radio broadcast from the stage of the Met,capturing for posterity the voices of the Met's house singers from a period that many opera aficionados regard as the Golden Age of opera singing. Sony Classical has been priviledged to take these airtapes from the Met's audio archive,digitally enhance their sonic quality (often monoaural sound) and present them to the public on compact disc in Sony's recent "The Metropolitan Opera" series. Heading the cast in the title role is tenor Robert Merrill as the hunchbacked court jester of Mantua. Rigoletto is an operatic tragedy ultimately derived from a drama by the French author Victor Hugo, the same author who created the deaf hunchback character Quasimodo in his famous novel. Rigoletto's daughter Gilda is portrayed by another one of the Met's reigning stars of that era,soprano Roberta Peters. The Duke of Mantua is yet another one of the Met's luminary house tenors, Richard Tucker. Fausto Cleva conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

SUNDAY JUNE 8TH
Puccini,Tosca
When this immortal work of Puccini's first reached the stage in 1900 there were certain critics who weren't impressed with the bloodshed of the story and the overblown passions of the protagonists. Some complained that the plot,adapted from the play by the French playwright  Victorien Sardou, was totally substandard. George Bernard Shaw thought of Sardou's La Tosca as an empty-headed shocker,yet he confessed prophetically,"Oh.if it had but been an opera!" Puccini's Tosca fulfilled Shaw's expectations. Today nobody minds it that this opera is really "over the top." I have presented Tosca four times before over going-on three decades of opera broadcasting. The title role has been the vehicle for many an ambitious soprano. The esteemed Hungarian soprano Eva Marton took it on for the Sony Classical recording I aired on Sunday,May 5,1991,with superstar tenor Jose Carreras as Cavaradossi. Michael Tilson Thomas was conducting. Then on Sunday,September 14,1997 it was the Iranian-born Alexamder Rahbari conducting and Miriam Gauci as the heroine in a Belgian National Radio and TV production (a Koch International CD release). On Sunday, June 1,2003 that greatest of twentieth century divas Maria Callas was heard opposite her tenor of choice Giuseppe DiStefano portraying Cavaradossi. The recording was the historic 1952 Mexico City stage production (Opera  D'Oro CD reissue of the old mono  tapes). That same year on November 2 I aired the EMI Classics CD reissue of the 1953 La Scala production in Milan. Callas and DiStefano were back together again,this time joined by that greatest of Italian baritones Tito Gobbi as the villain Baron  Scarpia. Listen today for another historic recording of Tosca coming to us from Sony Classical in its recent "The Metropolitan Opera" series of issues of airtapes of live broadcasts from the Met. Kurt Adler was conducting the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra during the broadcast on April 17,1962. The distinguished African-American soprano Leontyne Price is the singer Floria Tosca,with Italian tenor Franco Corelli as the painter and revolutionary Mario Cavaradossi.

SUNDAY JUNE 15TH
Mahler, Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection,"
Martinu,Juliette,"Fragments."
From the year 2006 onwards I got in the habit of programming the Mahler song cycles and symphonies around the time of the Summer solstice. You've heard all the song cycles:Das Lied von der Erde, Kindertotenlieder, Rueckert Lieder, Das Knaben Wunderhorn, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Das Klagende Lied in both their orchestrated and piano versions. You also got to hear Mahler symphonies that have significant writing for solo singers and chorus. I've broadcast the Symphony No. 8,the gargantuan "Symphony of A Thousand" twice before. Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (1894)  I have broadcast once before on Sunday,June 26,2011. Even his symphonies have an operatic quality;they are really symphonic cantatas. (Remember, Gustav Mahler was primarily an opera conductor. He conducted at the Met in New York City in his later career.) Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony No. 2 in C Minor sets a text drawn from the 18th century German poet Friedrich Klopstock's Resurrection Ode. ( The composer himself, however, never designated it as having anything to do with resurrection.) The British conductor Sir Simon Rattle directed the Berlin Philharmonic and Berlin Radio Chorus in an EMI recording of the Mahler Second made live in performance in 2010 in Berlin's Philharmonie concert hall. Heard in solo capacity are the English soprano Kate Royal and the Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena. This is Rattle's second recording of Mahler's second symphony for EMI. For him it has become a signature showpiece of his conducting style. Writing for Fanfare magazine (July/August,2011) reviewer Christopher Abbot says the new EMI Classics issue equals or surpasses Rattle's 1986 interpretation,which was intensely dramatic. Abbot gives the 2010 recording his very highest recommendation, and the EMI sonics he calls,"...the most impressive stereo recording that I've heard in some time."
    Recognizing that some listeners won't be satisfied until they hear some actual opera,I have an additional aural feature:three 'fragments," which are actually extended excerpts from the 20th century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu's dream opera Juliette (1938),with Magdalena Kozena in the title role. These fragments come along with the orchestral suite from Juliette on a 2008 Supraphon compact disc release. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the Czech  Philharmonic Orchestra. I have broadcast the complete Juliette opera twice before,in 1986 on Supraphon LP's (back when it was the Czechoslovak state record label) and again in 2004 in CD reissue.



SUNDAY JUNE 22ND
Massenet,Herodiade
This opera,which premiered in Brussels in 1881 with great success,is Massenet's take on the story of Salome, and while his source material is the same (Gustav Flaubert's 1877 novella), Massenet's musical treatment is completely different from the Salome opera of Richard Struass. Massenet's Herodiade went on to triumph in Paris in 1884 and elsewhere,but it fell out of the repertoire in the 1920's,then disappeared until the general of Jules Massenet's operas in the 1970's. San Francisco Opera revived Herodiade in 1994. Valery Gergiev led the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus,with a stellar cast of the era. Soprano Renee Fleming tops the bill as Salome. John the Baptist is superstar tenor Placido Domingo. The recording of the SF Opera production came back into circulation in 2013 on two CD's courtesy of Newton Classics of the UK.



SUNDAY JUNE 29TH
Schreker, Die Gezeichneten
Franz Schreker (1878-1934) was associated with the Viennese school of late Romanticism. He was a colleague of Schoenberg and Zemlinsky.Early in his composing  career Schreker wrote songs,setting some of the same poems that Mahler drew upon in his own Das Knaben Wunderhorn. On Sunday, June 14,2009 I broadcast a Bridge CD of Schreker's Lieder,including the cycle of six songs called the Mutterlieder ("Songs of A Mother," 1897),which are reminiscent of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Later in his career Schreker wrote operas. Die Gezeichneten  ("The Stigmatized," 1918) established his reputation as the preeminent opera composer of his generation in Central Europe. "The Stigmatized" is the tragedy of an ugly,misshapen man who is deceived by those around him. Schreker came up with the story and wrote his own German language libretto. The scene is sixteenth century Genoa,and the central character,the hunchbacked nobleman Alviano Salvago,has some of the traits of Shakespeare's Othello and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. LA Opera revived Die Gezeichneten in 2010. "The Stigmatized" was recorded live in performance in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,Los Angeles,with James Conlan conducting the LA Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Tenor Robert Brubaker portrays Alviano. Bridge Records released Die Gezeichneten on three compact discs in 2013.

In these broadcasts over the months of May and June most of the recordings I will be employing come from our station's ever-growing library of classical music on disc. The BIS disc of Grieg songs, including the Haugtussa song cycle, comes on loan from the Allen Memorial Library,the music library of the Hartt School here on the campus of the University of Hartford.Britten's War Requiem was loaned for broadcast by a private collector,Rob Meehan,who is a former WWUH classics deejay. Thanks as always goes to Kevin O'Toole,our WWUH operations director,for mentoring me in the preparation of these notes for cyber- publication. 

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