SUNDAY MARCH 6TH - Talbot, Path of Miracles,
Theofanidis,Creation,Creator 
     This is the fourth Sunday in Lent, the forty day penitential period leading up to Easter. During Lent throughout Christian Europe the opera houses traditionally would close, and sacred oratorio prevailed. Lent  provides me with the opportunity to present choral music in the Judeo-Christian tradition. One old Catholic tradition has to do with pilgrimage. The devout would journey to Rome, or to some location associated with one or another saint. Compostela in Spain was a very popular place of pilgrimage. I invite you to tread the Path of Miracles to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela. British composer Joby Talbot (b. 1971) will levitate you there by listening to his glorious choral composition upon the poetic text of Robert Dickinson. The text includes quotes from Holy Scripture and medieval devotional literature. There are four stages along the route to the martyr St. James' resting place in Compostela cathedral. The four movements of Path of Miracles premiered in 2005.The Tenebrae vocal ensemble originally commissioned the work from Talbot, but today you hear it sung by the concerted voices of Conspirare, directed by Craig Hella Johnson. Conspirare are based in Austin, Texas and have an international reputation in the field of a cappella  choral performance. Joby Talbot's Path of Miracles came out on a single Harmonia Mundi USA compact disc in 2015.    
     We round out this afternoon's broadcast with a specimen of contemporary oratorio. His name may be Greek, but Christopher Theofanidis (b. 1967) is an American composer, born in Dallas, Texas. His compositions have been performed by topnotch orchestras all over the world, and he has received opera commissions from San Francisco Opera and Houston Grand Opera. He also has a longstanding connection with the Atlanta Symphony and their conductor Robert Spano. It was for them that Theofanidis composed Creation/Creator, which premiered in April, 2015 at Atlanta Symphony Hall. Religions worldwide regard God as the Creator Being. We come to know God through His creations. Theofanidis put together his own libretto from various sacred texts, augmented by qoutations from various poets, philosophers and scientists. An actor and actress are heard in certain spoken word passages. There are six singing soloists, with Spano directing the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Creation/Creator was recorded live t its world premiere performance. It was quickly issued through ASO Media, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's own record label, in 2015 on one CD.    


SUNDAY MARCH 13TH - Handel,Jephtha Many of George          
     Frideric Handel's oratorios were premiered during Lent. On this the fifth and last Sunday in Lent I will present for a third time on the airwaves Handel's last full length composition, Jephtha. In 1752 it was a struggle for Handel to complete writing  the music. His eyesight was giving out and he went completely blind immediately thereafter. (True, he wrote another oratorio even in blindness, The Triumph of Time and Truth, in 1757, but its score was assembled with the assistance of colleagues and came from preexisting music.) Jephtha is a lyric tragedy derived from the Old Testament Book of Judges. Jephtha, the Israelite military hero, must sacrifice his daughter Iphis to the Lord as a consequence of his bargain with God, who grants him victory. The story has its parallels in the Greek legends about Idomeneus and Agamemnon. In Thomas Morell's libretto for Jephtha Iphis' death sentence is commuted because of the 18th century public's demand for a happy ending. Jehovah shows His mercy and Handel gets to end the oratorio, as usual, with a rousing "Halleluyah!" chorus. I have presented Jephtha twice before, first on Sunday, March 11,1997, working from a CD reissue of a 1979 Decca/London recording. Neville Marriner led his own chamber orchestra The Academy of St. Martin in the  Fields, with an all-English lineup of choristers and vocal soloists. That English orchestral Academy is not a "period instrument" ensemble, but the Academy for Ancient Music of Berlin certainly is. Marcus Creed directed those "period" players, plus the RIAS Chamber Chorus and a mostly British cast of solo singers. The 1994 Berlin Classics CD release of Jephtha was broadcast on Sunday, November 2, 2014. The broadcast was intended to promote an upcoming local performance of the oratorio making use of a new performing edition of Handel's score prepared by Ken Nott, resident musicologist of the Hartt School. The Hartt Collegium and Hartt Chamber Choir took part in the concert. Today you will hear the latest recording of Jephtha released under the British CORO record label in 2014. Harry Christophers directs the period instrumentalists and chorus of The Sixteen, with six British vocal soloists.
     On this Lenten Sunday your 'lyric theater" program participates in Marathon 2016, this station's annual week of intensive on-air fundraising. Periodically during the course of the afternoon's presentation I will be going on mike to urge you opera lovers to phone in your pledges of financial support to the Sunday opera program and indeed to the entire weeklong lineup of classical programming on WWUH. You faithful listeners have never failed to help us meet of even exceed our fundraising goals in Marathons past, so I thank you in advance for your generosity.


SUNDAY MARCH 20TH - Keiser,Brockes Passion
Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739) was Germany's first opera composer of significance. In addition to writing over eighty (?) lyric stage works for Hamburg's Goosemarket opera house, as Cantor of Hamburg cathedral he compsed a considerable amount of sacred music. His Passion-oratorio according to St. Mark (1717?) was enormously significant in serving as a model for J. S. Bach's immortal St. Matthew Passion. On Palm Sunday, March 22, 1997 I presented the Christophorus CD recording of Keiser's St. Mark Passion (Brembeck/Parthenia ensemble, my collection). Keiser also tackled the Passion libretto that Hamburg's literary figure Barthold Heinrich Brockes penned in 1712. Brockes wordbook was widely circulated among composers in Lutheran Northern Germany. Keiser was the first to set it the same year it appeared. George Frideric Handel took it up in 1716. Handel's setting of the Broches-Passion I have broadcast on two Palm Sundays past, in 1991 and 2009 (McGegan/Capella Savaria, our station's own LP's). Then there's Georg Philipp Telemann's take on the Brockes text. The Harmonia Mundi recording of Telemann's work I broadcast on March 28, 2010 (Jacobs/Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin/RIAS Chamber Chorus, my collection). This Palm Sunday you get to hear the Keiser Brockes-Passion as released on two CD's courtesy of the Belgian record label Ramee in 2014. Peter van Heyghen conducts the period instrumental ensemble Les Muffati and the voices of Vox Luminis. The solo parts in the Passion are drawn from this choral group.


SUNDAY MARCH 27TH - Stravinsky, A Symphony of Psalms, Sacred Works 
     I'm surprised to note that over the course of three and a half decades of lyric theater broadcasting I have neglected to air Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (1930, rev. 1948).Although not very long in duration, it is one of Stravinsky's major works for chorus and orchestra. Stravinsky chose verses from Psalms 39, 40 and 150. This Easter Sunday I make up for my negligence with a 1963 recording that features the composer himself conducting. The recording was made in Toronto, Canada with the Festival Singers of Toronto and the CBC Symphony Orchestra. This now historic audio document was taken up into Sony Classical's "Igor Stravinsky Edition," a multivolume CD reissue in 2006 of all those early stereo tapings of Stravinsky conducting his own works made in the 1950's and 1960's for Columbia Masterworks. A Symphony of Psalms is lumped in with Stravinsky's other purely instrumental symphonies in Sony's Volume Four, but I think it more properly belongs with all his other sacred works of a choral nature contained in Volume Eleven. These works fill out two generously timed compact discs. Stravinsky leads the CBC Symphony again in some of the tapings, but also the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Gregg Smith Singers and LA Festival Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.    


SUNDAY APRIL 3RD -  Dvorak, Wanda From the celebratory mood of the Christian holiday Easter Sunday, we turn to a tragic tale about a pagan Slavic princess. Like his elder colleague Bedrzich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak composed in the new Czech national idiom. Dvorak's symphonies are loved worldwide and much played and recorded, especially the "New World" Symphony No. 9. Dvorak's operas, on the other hand, are rarely heard outside his native land. Rusalka (1901) is perhaps the best known of the ten he wrote. Dvorak's five act tragic opera Wanda (1881) premiered at the Czech National Theatre in Prague. Wanda reflects upon Polish, not Czech national history. The Polish heroine sacrifices herself; she throws herself into the river Vistula and drowns. As a lyric stagework, this is a barbarian epic spectacle. Dvorak's music for Wanda possesses all the melodic beauty of his symphonies. A German conductor Gerd Albrecht has given us what might be the most musically complete recorded version of Wanda. It was made for Orfeo, the record label of Radio Austria, under the auspices of West German Radio. Albrecht leads the Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Radio Cologne,with an international cast of vocal soloists, some of whom are native Czech singers. I last broadcast the three Orfeo CD's on Sunday, January 27, 2001.

    
SUNDAY APRIL 10TH -  Rameau, Zais Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) is now considered to be the greatest composer of the French baroque: a figure who should rank alongside Bach and Handel. Rameau was a musical theorist who established the foundation principles of the science of acoustics. He was as well a prolific composer of opera. New recordings of his many lyric theaterworks keep coming out. I have drawn upon the growing Rameau discography, most recently in airing the 2013 Glossa release of Les Surprises de l'Amour (1748/1758) on Sunday, February 7th. In 2015 another one of  Rameau's works from 1748 came out on three silver discs through the limited edition Aparte line of the French Harmonia Mundi record label. Zais is styled a Pastorale Heroique, but it is really a kind of fairy opera with Masonic influence like Mozart's Magic Flute. More so than The Magic Flute it has elements of the supernatural. The overture to Zais is astounding. It depicts in sound the universe and its four primordial elements arising out of chaos. It is far more innovative in its baroque  fashion than Haydn's orchestral introduction to his Creation oratorio. Rameau's score for Zais is replete with wonderful dance music for the ballet sequences that were required in opera of the French baroque. Zais tells a tale of constancy in love, a love that overcomes all trials. The shepherdess Zelidie, as voiced by soprano Sandrine Piau, will not be deceived by the shapeshifting tricks of her beloved Zais, the king of fairyland. The Sylph monarch is portrayed by tenor Julian Pregardien. The vocal soloists are backed by the French period instrument ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, directed by Christophe Rousset. The Chamber Choir of Namur is also heard in certain numbers.


 SUNDAY APRIL 17TH -  Weber,Silvana This is a strange operatic work in that the title character never sings a single note. In fact, she doesn't even utter so much as a spoken word until the very end. Originally called Waldmaedchen or "Forest Maiden," Silvana is an innocent nature-girl who, although mute, acts out her emotions on stage. Written when Carl Maria von Weber was but thirteen years old, the opera premiered unsuccessfully in 1800. It was largely reworked and mounted again a decade later. In its final 1810 form Silvana has all the attributes of German opera of the early Romantic period as we have come to it through Der Freischuetz. Passages from the music to Silvana will sound strangely familiar to listeners who know the famous Weber opera that followed it in 1821. Those who know and love Mozart's The Magic Flute will recognize a lot of Papageno in one of the male characters in Silvana: the buffoonish Krips, squire to Count von Helfenstein. There exists only one other recording of Silvana, made live in performance in 1996 at the Hagen Opera in Germany and issued by the Danish record label Marco Polo.The new German cpo label recording is derived from a live radio broadcast of a concert performance given in Munich in 2010. This performance benefits by a new critical edition of Weber's score. Ulf Schirmer conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra and Chorus of Bavarian Radio.    
 

SUNDAY APRIL 24TH -  Leo, L'Ambizione Delusa The origins of the Italian opera buffa can be traced back to Naples in the second quarter of the 18th century. Three Neapolitan opera composers of that period essentially created the genre: Leonardo Vinci, Giovanni Batista Pergolesi and Leonardo Leo (1694-1744). Pergolesi's works, especially the comic intermezzo La Serva Padrona (1733), are known about, but the comic operas of Vinci and Leo have only recently been rediscovered, revived onstage and subsequently recorded. I was introduced to the comic operas of Leonardo Leo through the 1995 Nuova Era recording of Amor Vuol Sofferenza ("Love Requires Suffering," 1739), made live in performance at the '94 Festival della Valle d'Itria. I have broadcast that recording twice. Next came Leo's L'Alidoro (1741), the world premiere recording of which was released in 2010 through the Italian Dynamic label. I broadcast L'Alidoro on Sunday, August 7,2011. Now along comes Leo's L'Ambizione Delusa  ("The Frustrated Ambition" 1740), also presumably in its world premiere recording for Dynamic. This baroque Commedia Pastorale in three acts you might think of as a Neapolitan version of 'The Beverly Hillbillies." Domestics of peasant stock from the neighboring countryside have struck it rich.They move out of the city and into a country estate, where they act out their silly fantasies of what the wealthy upper crust are like. The silliness only ends when their mansion burns to the ground. L'Ambizione Delusa  was recorded live in performance in 2013 at the Martina Franca Festival. Antonio Greco directs the Orchestra ICO of Magna Grecia of Taranto (at the Southern tip of Italy). Writing for Fanfare magazine (Nov/Dec,2015 issue), reviewer Jerry Dubins says this Dynamic release "...is not just for 18th century opera specialists; it's enjoyable all around and recommended to everyone."    
    I have that Dynamic recording of L'Ambizione Delusa in my own collection of opera on CD. Also in my collection are Rameau's Zais and Weber's Silvana. I'm always glad to broadcast my own records, and my record collector colleague Rob Meehan, a former classics deejay here at WWUH, is likewise happy to loan me his copy of the Theofanidis oratorio Creation/Creator for broadcast. Over a span of three decades Rob has kept loaning me various items from his extensive holdings of recordings of "alternative" classical music of the twentieth and  twenty first centuries. All the other featured recordings in the two months of this go-round of programming come from our station's ever-growing library of classical music on disc. Thanks as always must go to our station's operations director Kevin O'Toole for mentoring me in the preparation of these notes for cyber-publication.