SUNDAY, JULY 2nd -

Glass, The Perfect AmericanThe Sunday next to the Fourth of July holiday calls for an American opera, something that depicts on the lyric stage an iconic American figure. America's master of the minimalist style (a style he partly created), Philip Glass (b. 1937) has turned out to be a prolific composer of opera. I have been broadcasting recordings of his operas going all the way back to Sunday, January 12, 1986, when I presented the CBS Masterworks LP recording of Satyagraha (1980), his opera about the iconic figure of Mahatma Gandhi. So who might 'The Perfect American" of this Philip Glass opera be? Henry Ford would be a good guess, but no, it's Walt Disney! Rudolf Wurlitzer's libretto for The Perfect American is adapted from a work of biographical fiction with the same title by Peter Stephan Jungk. The novelist gives us his fantasy about the last days of the worldfamous creator of Mickey Mouse. Fantasy versions of various people in Walt's life parade through the operatic spectacle: Walt's brother Roy, his wife Lillian and even pop artist Andy Warhol. All of them plus an Abraham Lincoln robot (!). The Perfect American

SUNDAY, JULY 9th

Mondonville, IsbeOver the Sundays of the two Summer months I like to program lightweight, easy-to-take lyric theater music that compliments the listener's laidback, vacationtime frame of mind. Often I include works that have a bucolic or pastoral element. Jean-Joseph Cassanea de Mondonville (1711-72) came along at the end of the century-long period of the flowering of French baroque opera. The period began in the 1660's with the tragedies lyriques of Lully and culminated in the operas of Mondonville's elder contemporary and rival Jean-Philippe Rameau in the 1760's. After Rameau, Mondonville was the most celebrated composer in France. And he was a virtuoso violinist to boot! The French public over time began to turn from the Lullian lyric tragedy to the lighter weight operatic pastorale and the opera-ballet. Mondonville's Isbe (1742) is styled a Pastorale heroique in a prologue and five acts. The French public demanded dance sequences and, like Rameau, Mondonville wrote a lot of excellent dance music for his operas. Isbe is no exception. He also had at his disposal the best singers France could offer for the cast of Isbe. Some of the glory of the French operatic stage in the eighteenth century is recaptured in what I presume is the world premiere recording of Mondonville's Pastorale heroique  for the Spanish Glossa record label. The Center for Baroque Music at Versailles has revived many gems of the French baroque operatic repertoire and staged them in the opera theater of Versailles palace. The Centre de Musique Baroque co-produced this Glossa recording of Isbe. The actual recording sessions took place not in France but in Budapest, Hungary in the Spring of 2016 at the Bela Bartok National Concert Hall. Gyorgi Vashegyi directed the period instrument players of the Orfeo Orchestra plus the Purcell Choir, with a multinational cast of nine vocal soloists. A 2016 Glossa release on three compact discs.

SUNDAY, JULY 16th

Mozart, Cosi fan tutte In the genre of  the eighteenth century Italian opera buffa, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte ("Thus Do They All," 1790), is doubtless the most perfect example. By "perfect" this must mean the classic symmetry of the composition and its unfailing melodiousness. Certainly, it possesses the perfect buffo libretto provided by Mozart's frequent collaborator, Lorenzo da Ponte. Cosi fan tutte has been frequently recorded. A renowned interpreter of eighteen century music, the late Sir Charles Mackerras, conducted Cosi for its staging at the 1993 Edinburg Music Festival in Scotland. An international cast of operatic notables of the day was assembled for this production: the English soprano Felicity Lott as Fiordiligi, the American tenor Jerry Hadley as Ferrando, the Italian tenor Alessandro Corbelli as Guilelmo and the French bass Gilles Cachemaille portraying Don Alfonso. (Mackerras himself was Australian by birth.) The Edinburg Festival Chorus and Scottish Chamber Orchestr4a took part in the Usher Hall recording sessions. Telarc released the 1993 Edinburg Festival Cosi on three compact discs in 1994. A reissue of Mackerras' wonderful interpretation came along in 2008. I make use of that three CD reissue in broadcast today.

SUNDAY, JULY 23rd

Vivaldi, La Silvia, Worden, You Us We All  Besides composing hundreds of concertos for violin, etc., Antonio Vivaldi was a prolific composer of opera. A couple of dozen Vivaldi operas survive musically complete, or almost complete, and at least a couple of dozen more in fragmentary form. We know of other Vivaldi operas for which the scores are missing. I have broadcast historically informed recorded performances of many operas by "The Red Priest." He also composed a lyric stagework in the sub-genre of the pastorale: La Silvia (1721). The widely traveled violin virtuoso came to Milan to pen a work in celebration of the birthday in the Summer of 1721 of the Empress Elizabeth-Christine of Austria. The city of Milan was then under Austrian rule. The Dramma pastorale was well received at its premiere performance there.The Silvia of its title refers to Rhea Silvia of Roman legend. She dwells in Alba Longa, as envisioned in an Arcadian past before the founding of Rome. The score of La Silvia is lost, but because Vivaldi recycled so many arias from his vast operatic output, it is possible to reconstruct most of this pastorale. An entirely plausible opening sinfonia can also be supplied. No reconstructed recitatives were included, however, when La Silvia was issued in its world premiere recording in 2000. Violinist/conductor Gilbert Bezzina lead the French period instrumental group he founded in 1984, Ensemble Baroque de Nice, with four vocal soloists. That recording was picked up for reissue by the French Ligia label in 2015 on a single silver disc. This is not the first time I have featured such a Vivaldi reconstruction. On Sunday, February 12, 2012 I presented Fabio Biondi's reconstruction of Ercole sur Termodonte (1723) in its 2012 CD release through Virgin Classics.

SUNDAY, JULY 30th

Gilbert & Sullivan, Princess Ida This is usually the Sunday on which I present one or another of the comic operas of William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. I have broadcast Princess Ida (1884) twice before. Coming between Iolanthe and The Mikado, it belongs to the period when the powers of composer and librettist were at their zenith. Strangely, Gilbert wrote the playbook for this operetta in blank verse, and it has three acts, as opposed to the expected two. Gilbert contrived a satire on Tennyson's poem The Princess, incorporating his own wry commentary on the Victorian movement for women's emancipation and education. On Sunday, July 27, 2003 I drew upon an old Decca/London LP set. It preserves a classic 1965 stereo recording of Princess Ida with Sir Malcolm Sargent directing the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the cast and chorus of the  D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, who have long been the internationally recognized guardians of the G & S canon, as directly passed down to them from impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte through his daughter Bridget. Nobody has a lock on that canon, however, since amateur lyric theater companies of considerable talent all over the world perform these works, like our own Simsbury Light Opera Company. (The renowned Savoyard Martyn Green coached them at the very end of his career.) On a more professional level, the Ohio Light Opera Company staged Princess Ida in the Summer of 1999. Founded in 1979, OLOC is the resident theatrical institution at the College of Wooster (Ohio), a school with a strong emphasis on the performing arts. Newport Classics released the recording of that production on two CD's in 2000.this recording is the first to include all of Gilbert's witty dialog. The classic Decca/London release had no dialog at all. I last broadcast the Newport Classics CD's on Sunday, July 29, 2007.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6th

Romberg, The Student Prince In the course of my summer programmingI always try to include a sentimental Central European-style operetta. The Student Prince (1924) is absolutely oozing with nostalgia for bygone "golden days" passed in the quaint old German university town of Heidelberg. This operetta, however, is American in origin. Sigmund Romberg (1887-1951) was Hungarian by birth. He studied in Vienna, then came to the United States in 1909. He spent his career as a composer entirely in New York City. He wrote a string of hit shows for the Shubert Brothers impresarios. The most successful of them all was The Student Prince. It had a fabulous first run of 608 performances, the longest of any Romberg show. It has been filmed at least twice and revived onstage in various adulterated versions. It's hard to believe that until 1989 Romberg's score in its original orchestration had never again been heard following the premiere Broadway production. A musically complete concert production was recorded in the UK for release through the British Jay record label in 1990. It returned to the arrangements made by Romberg's principal orchestrator, Emil Gerstenberger. That studio recording was based on a staged revival by New York City Opera. John Owen Edwards conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra and Ambrosian Chorus. The recording was picked up stateside by Musical Heritage Society. That MHS reissue on two CD's I have broadcast twice before, on Sunday, August 18, 1996 and August 20, 2006. The 1989 British recording has been superseded by a German concert production recorded as broadcast from the Cologne studios of WDR West German Radio in 2012. German speaking singers sang the operetta in its original American English libretto. The American accents sound authentic even in the spoken word passages. The American conductor John Mauceri, a historian of the American lyric theater, directed the orchestra and chorus of West German Radio Cologne. The German classical record label cpo issued its own musically complete Student Prince on a pair of silver discs in 2016.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 13th

Paisiello,La Grotta di Trofonio You've already listened to a famous Italian opera buffa by Mozart. Get ready  to audition a really obscure but delightful work in that comic genre. Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) wrote a "Barber of Seville" opera in 1782. It was world famous and enormously popular for decades until Rossini's new version came along in 1816. I have broadcast the Paisiello "Barber" three times in the past, first on an old Mercury LP recording from 1960 on Sunday, October 6,1985 and then employing the 1985 Frequenz CD release on Sunday, August 14,1994 and October 8,2006. Another one of his buffa successes was Socrate Immaginario ("The Man Who Thought He Was Socrates," 1775). A Bongiovanni CD release of that now forgotten work I presented on two occasions, on Sunday, July 21,2002 and again on Sunday, August 9,2009. Perhaps Paisiello's biggest hit was Nina, ossia la Pazza per Amore ("Nina,or the Madness of Love," 1789), a sentimental lyric comedy, which was revived at La Scala, Milan's prestigious opera house, in 1999, with Riccardo Muti directing the musical resources. The Agora CD release of Nina I presented on Sunday, August 15, 2004. Now along comes the world premiere recording of La Grotta di Trofonio ("Trofonio's Cave," 1785) through the Italian Dymanic record label. This 2017 release captures the audio part of the staged production of thisopera buffa at the 42nd Festival della Valle d'Itria. The setting is eighteenth century Greece. Trofonio, an aged philosopher, is the proprietor of a magic cave. People who go into it come outwith a total change of personality. A succession of marriageableyoung ladies and their suitors resort to Trofonio's cave with hilarious results. The theatrical gimmick of the magic cave seems to have been popular at that time. Antonio Salieri drew upon the same libretto by Giuseppe Palomba for his own "magic cave " opera produced in Vienna. Paisiello was long associated with the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; he included a character who sings in Neapolitan dialect. It's fitting that the modern Foundation of the Teatro San Carlo should co-produce La Grotta di Trofonio. The opera was recorded live in performance in July, 2016. Giuseppe Grazioli conducts the International Orchestra of Italy with a cast of eight singers, all of whom are native Italian speaking.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20th

Lehar, Die Gottergatte  The second half of the nineteenth century was the "Golden Age" of Viennese-style operetta. That was when Franz von Suppe, "The Waltz King" Johann Strauss and Carl Millocker delighted the public with tuneful, lighthearted lyric stageworks. There followed a Silver Age of operetta, an age that cultivated a nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian imperial past. The leading composer of that Silver Age was undoubtedly the Hungarian Franz Lehar (1870-1948). Der Gottergatte  ("The God-Hudsband, or "Lord and Master," 1904) was Lehar's third operetta, coming just before the enormous success of "The Merry Widow." Lehar would write many more in his long career, and these works became progressively more nostalgic and less comic. The last of them have sad endings. This early one, however, has some of the satirical qualities of Offenbach's famous "Orpheus in the Underworld." In Lehar's operetta "The Lord and Master" ie. Jupiter is implicated in an adulterous scandal among the ancient Greek gods of Olympus. I treat you this Sunday afternoon to an historic recording of Der Gottergatte, made in March, 1945 in Vienna, as broadcast in studio production over Nazi Reichssender radio, just before World War Two ended in Europe.Max Schonherr directed the Vienna Radio Orchestra and Chorus. One of the six vocal soloists is tenor Anton Dermota. The airtape in monaural sound of the live radio broadcast was digitally reprocessed for release through the German cpo record label in 2012 on two compact discs.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 27th

Delius, IrmelinI always reserve the last Sunday in August for one of the operas of Frederick Delius (1856-1934). I do so because his music is so evocative of the lazy, hazy end of Summertime. Longtime readers of our WWUH Program Guide may remember my four-part series on the seven operas of Delius and the attributes of his impressionistic style, which appeared in the Guide in 1988-89. This Sunday we commence a fifth cycle of broadcasts of all his operas with his first one Irmelin (1892). It's his single longest musical composition: a gorgeous fairy tale of an opera with  a libretto by the composer himself, based partly on Hans Christian Andersen's version of the medieval romance of the Princess and the Swineherd. Irmelin never asw the stage in Delius' lifetime. A pity, too, since composers Edvard Grieg and Andre Messager praised its music. In 1953 Delius' friend and promoter Sir Thomas Beecham conducted an amateur performance of Irmelin which went unrecorded. In December, 1984 it was given in concert performance from the studios of the BBC Third Programme. The recording of that broadcast was issued under the BBC's Artium label, first on LP, then in CD format. I aired the three LP set way back in August of 1986, and the two CD reissue four times before in 1990, 1998, 2005 and 2010. Norman del Mar directs the BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Singers. A world premiere digital recording.

 

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