WWUH Classical Programming - July/August 2014 

SUNDAY JULY 6TH

Bolcom, Lucrezia, Musto, Bastianello, Mercurio, Many Voices 

     Comic opera and operetta will be the general fare throughout the nine Sundays of these two Summer months, plus other lighter weight lyric theater works that compliment your vacationtime frame of mind. We begin the Summer season with a pair of comic chamber operas by two contemporary American composers, both with wordbooks by a contemporary American librettist,Mark Campbell. Both compositions are scored for five singers and two pianos. Both were  commissioned and performed by the New York Festival of Song and premiered in a double bill in March of 2008 at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall. Lucrezia by William Bolcom (b. 1938) is Bolcom's riff on the Zarzuela, the popular lyric theater genre of Spain early on in the twentieth century.  It's also his operatic reimagining of the Renaissance writer Nicolo Machiavelli's Italian language comedy La Mandragola, which sends up the Roman Catholic Church, the  Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and the sanctity of motherhood. Bastianello by John Musto (b. 1954) is a modern take on an Italian folktale that pokes fun at the institution of marriage. The American record label Bridge issued Lucrezia and Bastianello together in a two-CD package as Two Comic Operas in 2010.

    William Bolcom and John Musto have written a considerable body of operatic works between them. Steven Mercurio (b. 1956) is internationally renouned as an opera conductor. Like Gustav Mahler, he conducted at the Met, and like Mahler too, he has composed numerous songs, which he eventually orchestrated. Mercurio himself describes them as "melancholy musings." His orchestrated collection (or "cycle," if you will) from 2000 is Many Voices.  Mercurio has worked with the vocal greats of opera in our time: soprano Sumi Jo, tenors Andrea Bocelli and Rolando Villazon and baritone Gino Quilico. These "many voices" and others lent their talents to Sony Classical's 2006 release. Mercurio leads the Prague Philharmonia, with tracks recorded in Prague's famous Rudolfinum concert hall.  Andrea Bocelli wrote the lyrics for two of the songs, "Desiderio" and "Paternita."  Mercurio wrote the verses for one of them, Eugene O"Neill for another. After listening to those two acerbic comic operas of Bolcom and Musto,  Mercurio's easygoing melancholy will serve as a tuneful tonic for your ears. I broadcast two tracks from the single Sony CD on Sunday, September 2, 2012.  I present the entire seven songs of Many Voices today.

SUNDAY JULY 13TH

Fall, The Rose of Stambul  

     I follow up the modern music of the Americans Bolcom, Musto and Mercurio with an operetta from an earlier period in the history of the Americam lyric theater: Leo Fall's The Rose of Stambul (1916).  Leo Fall (1873-1925) was an Austrian, not an American.  A colleague of the Hungarian Franz Lehar, like Lehar his career as a composer drew him to the imperial capital Vienna.  There Die Rose von Stambul was as enormous a success as Lehar's Die lustige Witwe.  From Vienna it went out all over the world. It had the irresistibly right components of romance,  saucy wit and exoticism. The exotic setting of the operetta is Istanbul (the Stambul of the title), the capital of the Ottoman empire, which in 1916 was about to collapse, as would the empire of Austria-Hungary.  The Turkish harem girls in the story are intelligent and hip. (They're like the Grisettes in "The Merry Widow.") Their over-the top spoken dialog passages are a hoot! And these are spoken in American English! The translated Rose of Stambul reached New Haven's Shubert Theater in 1922 in a Broadway-style adaptation, but it had never been performed in its original musical form in the United States until Chicago Folks Operetta took it up in 2011.  A new English translation of the dialog and lyrics was prepared, updating them a bit.  The new historically-informed American production was recorded live in performance for release on two CD's through the Naxos label in 2013.  The "period" 1920's sound of the whole affair is particularly interesting to listen to, especially the small pit orchestra. John Frantzen conducts the band and singing cast. These are the voices of American singing actors, not European opera stars.  

SUNDAY JULY 20TH

Rossini, L'Equivoco Stravagante  

     Only in the past couple of decades have all of Gioacchino Rossini's 38 operas finally appeared on disc in definitive recordings. The two act farce L'Equivoco Stravagante ("The Bizarre Deception,"1811) is Rossini's second opera, and surely the least known of all the works in his operatic canon. The one and only production of this work in Bologna was a fiasco. The city fathers suppressed it after three performances because of its objectionable libretto. Among the intricacies of the plot, the heroine is passed off as a eunuch in drag! That is the "bizarre deception" of the title. The music of L'Equivoco Stravaganteis Rossini at his light-hearted buffa best, beautifully orchestrated and bubbling with lovely melody. The music may well sound familiar to Rossini aficionados. Rossini mined the score of this unsuccessful opera buffa in writing many of his later, better known operas.  This Rossini rarity came out on two CD's under the Naxos label in 2002 during the Rossini in Wildbad Festival,  Bad Wildbad in Germany. Alberto Zedda conducted the Czech Chamber Chorus and Czech Chamber Soloists orchestra with a six member cast of solo singers. Those Naxos CD's were last broadcast on Sunday, August 10, 2003.  Prior to that date I broadcast the only other available recording of the lyric farce, the one issued on CD's under the Italian Bongiovanni, which was actually a reissue of a 1974 LP recording.  That was on Sunday, July 23, 2000.  You get to hear the Naxos release again today.

SUNDAY JULY 27TH   

Sullivan, The Beauty Stone

     Normally this would be the Sunday in the Summer seasonal lineup that I reserve for one or another of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.  Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) wrote much other lyric theater music both before and after his longtime collaboration with Mr. William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911). Before Gilbert he wrote the music for C. F. Burnand's lyric comedy Cox and Box (1866),recordings of which I have aired a couple of times. Then there's Burnand's comic opera The Contrabandista (1867) and the incidental music for Tennyson's Robin Hood play The Foresters (1893), which I aired back-to-back on a Hyperion CD on Sunday, March 6, 2005. Sullivan's dramatic cantata The Golden Legend (1886), after Longfellow's poem, came on Hyperion/Musical Heritage Society CD's. This I broadcast on Sunday, September 26, 2004. The closest thing to G & S minus the "G" might be Sullivan's very late work The Rose of Persia (1899, librettist Basil Hood), extended highlights of which (an hour's worth of music) were broadcast on a BBC Magazine compact disc release on Sunday, July 25, 1999.  Most important of all, however, was my broadcast on Sunday, April 28, 2013 of Sullivan's attempt at English grand opera Ivanhoe (1890), based on Sir Walter Scott's novel, recorded with the musical resources of the Welsh division of BBC Radio, and issued in 2010 on three Chandos CD's.  Ivanhoe was a considerable success at the Royal English Opera House in 1890, but The Beauty Stone was a flop at the home G & S venue, the Savoy Theatre, in 1897.  Like Ivanhoe, it was a medieval romance for the lyric stage. The Beauty Stone is a light opera, certainly, although not a comic one. In style it's not all that different from the Gondoliers of 1889. Sullivan's music was as engaging as ever, but the book and lyrics by Pinero and Carr failed to hold the attention of the Savoy audience.  This Sunday you can discover and appreciate the beauties of The Beauty Stone in its 2013 world premiere recording for Chandos.  The performing resources are virtually the same as for Ivanhoe.  Rory MacDonald directs the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales. Tenor Toby Spence was the hero in Ivanhoe.  Here he's the knight Philip, Lord of Mirlemont. "In this recording," writes Fanfare magazine's reviewer Ronald E. Graemes," we are spared all of Pinero's verse...this is the best case that one could ever have hoped for on behalf of this neglected opera." (Fanfare, May/June, 2014) 

SUNDAY AUGUST 3RD    

German, Tom Jones  

     Edward German (1862-1936) became the acknowledged successor to Sir Arthur Sullivan in the vein of light opera. Even Sullivan himself declared German was the only musician of genius who could follow him.  When Sullivan died leaving his last Savoy opera The Emerald Isle (1901) unfinished, German very ably completed the score, and won high praise from the critics of the day. German's most well known work is Merrie England (1902), also written for the Savoy Theatre.  I broadcast a recording of it on Sunday, July 26, 1998. His best work, musically and dramatically speaking, is Tom Jones (1907), based on the novel by Henry Fielding. German seems to have inherited Sullivan's gift for melody. Tom Jones has plenty of memorable tunes.  Strangely, the operetta had to wait until 2008 for its first  musically complete recording.  David Russell Hulme directed the National Festival Orchestra and Chorus of the UK, with a cast that includes seven (!) baritones.  Naxos Records released it on two compact discs in 2009 in its "Operetta Classics" series.

SUNDAY AUGUST 10TH 

Kodaly, Hary Janos  

     Way back in late Summer of 1982 I remember broadcasting on two London LP's the complete music for the comic opera Hary Janos (1926) by Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967).  Kodaly's orchestral suite derived from the opera is much more frequently  performed and recorded.  The complete music was taped in 1968 fro Decca/London.  Hungarian conductor Isztvan Kertesz came to London to record Kodaly's masterpiece, bringing with him a cast of native Hungarian singers.  Kertesz led the London Symphony Orchestra and Edinburgh Festival Chorus.  The Singspiel-style Hungarian language dialog was omitted altogether.  What makes this British recording so wonderful is its English language narrator, that comic genius of an actor, Peter Ustinov.  He also voices the part of Hary Janos, the bombastic village storyteller.  If he sneezes on purpose, it's a signal to his listeners that his story is pure fantasy. You actually hear the sneeze in Kodaly's music.  Ustinov's audio characterizations of various figures in the stories, especially the drunken Empress Maria Teresia, I say, are still hilarious to listen to today.  A quarter century down the line in opera broadcasting I again aired the old London LP's on Sunday, July 8, 2007.  Since then the  1969 London Hary Janos has reappeared in compact disc format in a four-CD Decca compilation that includes Kodaly's orchestral works and the choral Psalmus Hungaricus (1923).  The 2010 Decca reissue is what you will hear today.

SUNDAY AUGUST 17TH

Salieri, Falstaff  

     The popular film about Mozart's life Amadeus did not portray the figure of Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) in a particularly flattering light, yet for a supposedly second rate composer he was a greater success than Mozart in his chosen profession.  Salieri was a prolific composer, too, and he was in the main a composer of operas.  He wrote at least forty of them,compared to Mozart's twenty two. Salieri's comic opera Falstaff (1799) is Mozartean at every turn- so much so that at times it seems like he's quoting Mozart.  Falstaff is also an innovative work in that it was the first time an Italian language adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor was set to music. Salieri wrote some very popular, memorable tunes for the score of Falstaff.  The young Beethoven made one the theme of a set of piano variations.  In the history of opera Salieri's Falstaff is an excellent specimen of Italian opera buffa in the period immediately before Rossini came on the scene.  Falstaff got the recorded treatment it deserved from Hungaroton, the former Hungarian state record label, who issued it on three CD's in 1985, presumably a world premiere on disc.  I have broadcast these discs twice before, on Sundays August 23, 1994 and August 11, '96.

SUNDAY AUGUST 24TH

Lehar, Das Fuerstenkind  

     Sentimental Viennese operetta always figures in my Summertime programming. Who could be more songfully sentimental than Franz Lehar (1870-1948)!  I have broadcast recordings of all of his famous operettas: Die lustige Witwe (" The Merry Widow,"1905), Das Land des Laechelns ("The Land of Smiles," 1924) and my personal favorite Giuditta (1934).  I've also come up with recordings of his more obscure or less successful ventures in the genre. "The Merry Widow" is a classic of its kind,but stylistically it's conventional compared to Das Fuerstenkind ("The Prince's Child," 1909), whose lush orchestration looks forward to Lehar's later Silver Age works. The story of "The Prince's Child" is pretty typical of operetta: a Greek nobleman leads a double life.  He's a legitimate head of state,but he's also the head of a band of robbers.  His princess daughter has been kept in the dark about his alter ego.  The robbers prey upon tourists to Greece. A young American hostage falls in love with the robber/prince. Complications spring from the kidnapping of this girl, and what the princess learns about her father.  Das Fuerstenkind was recorded in radio broadcast from Munich in 2010. Ulf Schirmer conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Chorus of Radio Bavaria. "The Prince's Child" was released in 2013 on two compact discs through the German cpo label,in co-production with Radio Bavaria.

SUNDAY AUGUST 31ST

Delius, Eine Messe des Lebens, Welwood, Cynara 

     Every year I devote the last Sunday in August to the music of English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) because Delius' impressionistic style is so exquisitely evocative of those lazy, hazy days at the end of Summertime.  Over the course of three decades of lyric theater broadcasting I have presented several times in cycle the recordings of all of Delius' seven operas.  Delius himself considered his greatest work to be not one of them, but Eine Messe des Lebens ("A Mass of Life," 1909).  This paean to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche could never be mistaken for a musical setting of the Roman Catholic Mass.  Delius' amanuensis Eric Fenby wrote of 

him, 

"Delius was at heart a pagan."  "A Mass of Life" is a secular oratorio conceived on a grand scale like Mahler's symphonies, calling for a gigantic orchestra, even bigger chorus and vocal soloists. Delius selected his text from the most poetic and least polemical passages of Also Sprach Zarathustra. There's nary a hint of Nazi propagandizing in his libretto. Curiously, Hitler's pagan National Socialist regime in Germany never made use of Delius' oratorio for political purposes. Delius' music transcends all politics. The joy of living and love of Nature was what he was extolling in his "Mass." Way back in April of 1986 I broadcast the old 1953 mono LP recording of "A Mass of Life" with Delius' personal friend and artistic champion Sir Thomas Beecham conducting.  Then in April, 1993 came the Intaglio CD issue of a 1971 BBC radio broadcast of the "Mass," under Norman Del Mar's direction.  Another big name interpreter of English music, Richard Hickox recorded "A Mass of Life" for the British Chandos label.  Hickox lead the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.  The Chandos CD's I have aired twice before on Delius Sundays in 1997 and 2011. The Bournemouth Symphony has made a new recording of the "Mass." It was released on two Naxos CD's in 2012.  This time it's David Hill conducting the orchestra, with the Bach Choir,who sing the original German language text of Eine Messe des Lebens, along with five top notch British vocal soloists.  Fanfare magazine's reviewer Adrian Corleonis pronounces the Naxos release " ...a superb production and the grandest addition to the Delius discography in many years." (Fanfare, Nov/Dec, 2012.)   

    Keep listening for a new recording of Delius' choral masterpiece Sea Drift (1904), to the words of Walt Whitman.  Baritone Roderick Williams is the baritone soloist, joined by the Halle Orchestra and Chorus directed by Mark Elder.  Sea Drift was recorded live in performance in 2011 in Bridge-water Hall, Manchester, England for compact disc release under the famed orchestra's own label.  Delius was familiar with the exquisite four-stanza poem Cynara by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900).  It was inspired by the beautiful semi-divine figure in the Odes of the Roman poet Horace. Cynara is Dowson's finest lyric.  Its third stanza contains the phrase "Gone with the wind," taken up as the title of Margaret Mitchell's famous novel. Local composer Arthur Welwood (b. 1934) has set Cynara  to music. Welwood scored his setting for soprano voice and piano, with English horn obbligato. Cynara was recorded live in performance in October of 2013 in David Friend Hall at the Berklee College of Music, where Welwood teaches composition.  I obtained an exclusive CD copy of that premiere performance directly from the composer.  I feature it today in its world premiere broadcast.  Like myself, Welwood is a Delius aficionado, but does not model his own music on the impressionistic Delian style. You get to compare Welwood's setting of Cynara with that of Delius himself.  It's a late work of his, completed in 1929 with the assistance of Eric Fenby. Delius scored it for full orchestra and solo baritone. For all its beauty, Cynara remains rarely recorded. When Mark Elder and the Halle Orchestra essayed it in 2012 they did so in studio conditions. Again Roderick Williams was the soloist. Cynara and Sea Drift were piggybacked on the Halle's CD release of Gustav Holst's The Hymn of Jesus (1920).   I broadcast the Halle-Holst Hymn from that disc on Sunday, March 23, 2014.

   During this two-month period of programming I drew largely upon recordings in my own collection of opera on silver disc.  The only items derived from our WWUH classical music record library are the two comic operas of Bolcom and Musto, Steven Mercurio's Many Voices and the Rossini opera buffa. (Oh yes, I must not forget the Delius tracks from the Halle Orchestra CD, which is also in the station's holdings.) Thanks as always to our station's operations director Kevin O'Toole for mentoring me in the preparation of these notes for cyber-publication.