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SUNDAY JANUARY 6th Orff, Trionfi.  

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (1937) is one of the single most popular choral works in the repertoire, and just about everybody has heard some recording of it, or heard popular excerpts from this work. Did you know that Orff's famous dramatic cantata is actually part one of a trilogy of such cantatas? Orff composed the "Songs of Beuren" first, the song lyrics taken from a medieval Latin manuscript found in a Bavarian monastery. Later he set to music love poems by the Roman author Catullus, which become the second cantata, Catulli Carmina (1943). Still later he returned to the verse of Catullus, adding the fragments of a marriage ode by the ancient Greek poetess Sappho to a snippet from the playwright Euripides as his text for a third cantata. This is the not-so-well-known Trionfo di Afrodite (1953) in praise of the Graeco-Roman love goddess. It comes closest to opera as opera was originally conceived in the Italian Renaissance. Orff was also thinking of those Renaissance pageants known as "triumphs," so he called his trilogy Trionfi and styled it in Italian as a Trittico Theatrale. Listen on this first Sunday of 2019 to all three parts of Orff's complete conception as recorded in Leipzig in 1974/75 with Herbert Kegel conducting the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig and the Leipzig Radio Choir. Also taking part in the studio tapings were the boy choristers, the Kapellknaben of Dresden and the choir of Radio Berlin. Among the distinguished German singers of the period who participated was tenor Eberhard Buchner. First issued on LP's in 1976, the Berlin Classics label reissued Trionfi on two compact discs in 1992.

 

SUNDAY JANUARY 13th, Adams,Doctor Atomic

.One of the founders of musical minimalism, John Adams (b. 1947) has modified and refined his style as time went along and he became one of the major composers of opera in America. As this opera program went along I presented several recordings of his lyric theaterworks, notably Nixon in China (1987) on Sunday, September 4, 1988, The Death of Klinghofer (1991) on Sunday, March 7,1993 and I was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky (1997) on Sunday, March 21, 1999. Some people think Adams really hit his stride in the genre later yet with Doctor Atomic (2005), the story of the physicist Doctor Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first atomic bomb. Oppenheimer and his colleagues at the Los Alamos site were certainly conflicted about what they were doing. This bomb of theirs could kill thousands of innocent people! Furthermore, by the Spring of 1945 Germany had been defeated and the necessity to use such a weapon of mass destruction was very much in doubt. Oppenheimer's internal crisis spills over to affect his wife and her Native American maid. There's a live recording of Doctor Atomic, the world premiere recording, made in connection with its stage premiere by San Francisco Opera. In 2017 a second recording was made in BBC studios following the English National Opera performances. Starring as "Oppie" is baritone Gerald Finley. The composer himself conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers. You will hear Doctor Atomic as issued on two Nonesuch compact discs in 2018. Writing for Fanfare magazine in its Nov/Dec 2018 issue, reviewer Phillip Scott opines "Doctor Atomic is an important, moving and frightening work, and this recording is quite simply definitive."

 

 

SUNDAY JANUARY 20th, Rossini, Semiramide, Act One This was the last opera Gioacchino Rossini would ever write for an Italian opera house. It premiered with success at Venice in 1823. Rossini and his wife, the soprano Isabella Colbran (who first sang the title role), soon thereafter relocated to Paris, where the esteemed composer spent most of the rest of his life, dying there in 1868. Semiramide played all over Europe in short order. All the great singers of Rossini's time wanted roles in it. But as the nineteenth century progressed and the age of bel canto came and went, Semiramide gradually passed out of the repertoire. Written at the dawn of the bel canto singing style, its coloratura passages required prodigious vocal agility. There were no longer singers who could handle the demands of the music. That is, until the bel canto revival of the mid twentieth century. One remarkable voice championed this music: the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland. She was at the height of her vocal powers in 1965 when she recorded Semiramide for the Decca/London label. Sutherland is heard in the title role alongside another remarkable singer who took part in the revival, the American mezzo Marilyn Horne. Sutherland's husband conductor Richard Bonynge directed the London Symphony Orchestra and Ambrosian Chorus. That old London LP release went over the air on this program on Sunday, May 23, 2010. Semiramide has recently been recorded under the auspices of the Opera Rara record company, whose declared mission is "to rediscover, restore, record and perform the forgotten operatic heritage of the 19th century." This new studio recording of Rossini's bel canto masterpiece was made at Henry Wood Hall in London in August/September, 2016 following a concert-style performance for the BBC Proms. Sir Mark Elder conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with the Opera Rara Chorus. Starring as Semiramide, Queen of Babylon is Albina Shagimoratova. The Opera Rara studio production works from the critical edition of Rossini's score prepared by Philip Gossett and Alberto Zedda, the same edition that was employed in the Metropolitan Opera TV production of 1990 and which was published in 2001.

   Rossini's Semiramide is a truly grand opera in scale and looks forward to the French grand operas of Meyerbeer soon to come. In fact, in recorded performance it is also of Wagnerian length. On four Opera Rara compact discs, it won't quite fit into one Sunday's three-and-a-half- hour-long timeslot. Semiramide is in two very long acts. You will hear Act One in its entirety this Sunday.

 

 

SUNDAY JANUARY 27th,  Rossini, Semiramide, Act Two, Massenet,La Navarraise The second act of Semiramide doesn't last quite as long in broadcast as the first. That allows sufficient time afterwards for me to air another entire opera in two very short acts, La Navarriase (1894) by Jules Massenet, which sets forth a tragic tale of love in wartime. The scene is the Basque Country in northern Spain at the time of a nineteenth century Spanish internal conflict. Amid all the bloodshed of battle "The Girl from Navarre" commits a murder for the love of her soldier-boy. Back in the 1980's we had two recordings of La Navarraise in our WWUH classical music record library. I chose the one on a single 1975 RCA Red Seal LP for broadcast on Sunday, September 18, 1988. It featured American mezzo Marilyn Horne as the girl and tenor Placido Domingo as the young soldier. Our station has acquired the Warner Classics compact disc release from last year that stars tenor Roberto Alagna as sergeant Araquil opposite soprano Aleksandra Kurzak as Anita. Alberto Veronesi directs the Opera Orchestra of New York and the New York Choral Ensemble. Massenet's orchestral scoring is very colorful and calls for various special effects. This opera opened in London to much applause, but enthusiasm for it dwindled every time it reappeared on stage in the years leading up to World War One. The great American soprano Geraldine Ferrar had it revived one last time at the Met in 1921 as a vehicle for her vocal artistry. Like so many other Massenet operas, this one passed into oblivion thereafter. Now in the 21st century we get to rediscover the beauty and passion of Massenet's "Episode Lyrique," a little gem of the French operatic heritage.  

 

 

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 3rd,  Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko I have always liked the fairy tale operas of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844- 1908) and have broadcast recordings of them now and again over the years. Perhaps the single finest one of them all is Sadko (1898). The eponymous character is a minstrel and psaltery player whose hometown is Novgorod. The prosperous merchants of the town want to bring more commerce their way from Russia and beyond, but Novgorod lacks a navigable outlet to the sea. The minstrel has a plan to fix that, but the merchants mock him and Sadko has no gold to finance his venture. He finds help from the water spirits of nearby Lake Ilmen. Sadko then becomes a kind of Russian Sinbad the Sailor. With a fishnet he snatches up gold out of the lake. The gold funds a fleet of ships. Sadko's psaltery possesses magic powers with which he charms the Sea King. After an escapade in the undersea kingdom he returns in triumph to Novgorod. The old story from pre-Christian times has an explanation for how the Volkhov River came to be. Rimsky-Korsakov provided Sadko with a wonderful, colorful score. Russian bassos have always loved to sing "The Song of the Viking Guest" from Sadko, but the hit number of the opera is the world-famous "Song of India." The recording of Sadko you will hear today was made live in performance at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1993. Valery Gergiev conducts the Kirov Chorus and Orchestra with a cast of native Russian singers. The Philips label released Sadko on three compact discs.

 

 

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 10th, Lully, Armide This Tragedie en Musique, first staged in 1686, was the last and most magnificent product of the collaboration between the Italian immigrant composer Jean Baptiste Lully, the father of French opera, and the playwright Phillippe Quinault. Their presentations at the royal court of Louis XIV "The Sun King" at Versailles established the model for baroque music drama in French language. The Lullian model would last for a century, reaching its ultimate development in the operas of Rameau. Armide is a tragedie lyrique in five acts in the form prescribed in the spoken- word dramas of Corneille. Armide has been recorded several times in the course of the general revival of interest in baroque music in the later twentieth century. On Sunday, March 25, 1990 I presented Armide in an incomplete recording of the work, one that omits the fourth act, released through the French Erato label. The Belgian early music specialist Phillippe Herreweghe directed the Ensemble Vocal et Instrumental de la Chappelle Royale. Armide was recorded again in Paris in 2015 for release on a pair of silver discs through another latter day French label Aparte. In this case the opera was in its complete five act form. Christophe Rousset led the period instrument players of Les Talens Lyriques and the chamber chorus of Namur, plus solo singing cast. The Aparte recording went over the air almost exactly one year ago on February 11th. There is an American recording of Armide made in February, 2007 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Maryland at Catonsville. There is in fact an American troupe of period instrument players and singers specializing in the antique French lyric theater repertoire: Opera Lafayette, led by Ryan Brown. Armide was revived again and again at the Paris Opera in the decades after its first production, and with each revival its score was altered. Opera Lafayette departs from the original 1686 version in several places, partly in accordance with the work's own performance history in the eighteenth century. The prologue has been dropped altogether as it had been for the 1761 revival. Naxos released The Tragedy of Armide on two compact discs in 2008.

 

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17th, Trueman, Olagon, Fussell, Cymbeline This Sunday I offer you two lyric theater pieces of the twenty first century. First comes Dan Trueman's Olagon:A Cantata in Doublespeak. Essentially this is a modern retelling of the ancient Irish epic poem the Tain Bo Cuiailnge or "The Cattle Raid of Cooley," as translated and interpreted by the contemporary Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The "doublespeak" element in this cantata refers to what is called "macaronic verse," a practice of mixing languages going back to the Middle Ages. One notable example of this is the mixing of the vernacular and Latin in the Carmina Burana that Orff set to music. In Olagon it's modern English and ancient Irish that gets chopped up. Dan Trueman is an American composer and fiddler who accompanies the Irish vocalist Iarla O Lionaird. Additional vocals are provided by Trueman and the six members of the Eighth Blackbird ensemble, who are all accomplished instrumentalists. Eighth Blackbird is an American outfit, and Olagon was given its world premiere recording stateside at Princeton University in 2015. The Chicago-based label Cedille issued Olagon on two compact discs in 2017.

   American composer Charles Fussell (b. 1938) has been part of the Boston area's musical life for a couple of decades. Among his many talents and capacities he's a composer for the lyric stage. A recording of his chamber opera The Astronaut's Tale (1996) went over the air on this program on Sunday, September 2, 2012. Fussell is but one of a long line of composers to be inspired by the plays of William Shakespeare. He fashioned another chamber opera after Shakespeare's Cymbelline (1611). Fussell wrote, "The idea of a musical depiction of this work came as a result of seeing the Hartford Stage productions of Shakespeare. Their Cymbelline, directed by Mark Lamos (who later moved to opera)... touched me deeply..." Fussell's Cymbelline received its world premiere recording in 2016 in the studio of Futura Productions in Roslindale, Massachusetts. The three vocal soloists are joined by an ensemble of ten instrumentalists drawn from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, directed by Gil Rose. The recording comes to us on a single BMOP Sound compact disc.

 

 

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 24th, Paisiello, Fedra We commonly think of Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) as a composer of Italian comic opera. After all, it was he who wrote the original "Barber of Seville" in 1782, the one that came before Rossini's "Barber" of 1816. The old Mercury LP and Frequenz CD recordings of Paisiello's Il Barbiere di Siviglia I have broadcast several times over the years. I have also aired recordings of other, lesser known Neapolitan opere buffe by Paisiello, like Socrate Imaginario (1773) or La Grotta di Trofonio (1785). After the adopted son of Naples got back from his sojourn in Russia in 1784 he ceased to crank out so many of those comic operas in favor of works with more serious content. His sentimental romantic comedy Nina, ossia la Pazza per Amore (1789) was an enormous hit. I broadcast the Ricordi CD release of Nina on Sunday, August 15, 2004. Nina has its serious moments,but Fedra (1791), is more truly an opera seria. It tells a story taken up many times before by opera composers about Hippolytus and Aricia. This operatic version of the ancient Greek legend is given a happy ending. The role of Queen Phaedra (in Italian Fedra) is a study in guilt. Fedra was staged in 2016 at the Teatro Massimo Bellini of Catania in Sicily. The production draws upon Paisiello's autograph score as preserved in the library of the Naples Conservatory. Jerome Correas conducts the chorus and orchestra of the Teatro Massimo. The Italian Dynamic record label issued Fedra on two compact discs in 2016. Dynamic informs us that this is the world premiere recording of Paisiello's work.