SUNDAY  SEPTEMBER 3RD Rorem, Our Town  It was a hit when the original play was first staged in 1938; then in 1940 came the movie version, with film music by none other than Aaron Copland. Now Thornton Wilder's Our Town has been made into an opera! In 1951 Copland was asked to expand his film score into an opera, but Wilder wouldn't permit it. The playwright was notoriously picky about authorizing musical arrangements of his stageworks. Our Town had to wait until long after Wilder's passing when in 2006 Ned Rorem's operatic version was premiered at the Indiana University Opera Theater and subsequently professionally produced by Lake George Opera in upstate New York. Rorem treats the play as a chamber opera; his scoring is light and transparent. The formal structure of scenes closely follows Wilder's stage conception. Wilder wanted to depict stories of the lives of common laboring folk in an early twentieth century American town. Our Town the opera is perfect for broadcast on the Sunday of the Labor Day holiday weekend. And not only is Ned Rorem's Our Town an American working people's opera: it's a quintessentially New England opera as well. Wilder's town Grover's Corners is modelled on Peterborough, New Hampshire. Our Town was recorded in 2013 at the Rogers Center for the Arts, Merrimack College, in North Andover, Massachusetts, also in New England and not all that far from Peterborough. Gil Rose conducts the instrumentalists and chorus of Monadnock Music, with a large cast of Grover's Corners townies. Our Town the opera was released just this year on two compact discs through New World Records.

 

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 10TH Mozart, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail   No opera of Mozart's was so successful in his own lifetime. Immediately after its introduction at Vienna's Burgtheater in 1782 it took off for opera houses all over German-speaking Europe and beyond. "The Abduction from the Seraglio" is the finest specimen of a special subgenre of lyric theater in the eighteenth century: the "Turkish" opera. Sometimes comedic, sometimes melodramatic in nature, such operas were based upon a love story or tale of rescue and were set in some exotic location in the Near East. Every composer of any stature in Mozart's time tried his hand at Turkish opera. Over the years I've broadcast recordings of such works by Sammartini, Kraus and Haydn. Mozart's Turkish opera is also a Singspiel, an 18th century form of German musical comedy with spoken dialog. There are a lot of good recordings of "The Abduction" around. On Sunday, October 4, 1992 I broadcast a Sony Classical release of the Singspiel, recorded in 1991 in Vienna with Bruno Weil conducting the Vienna Symphony and chorus of the Vienna State Opera. That same year John Eliot Gardiner, the specialist in historically informed eighteenth century performance practice, recorded his own interpretation in London for Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv subsidiary. Gardiner led his own English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. The Gardiner "Abduction" went over the air on Sunday, August 4, 2013. The British label L'Oiseau Lyre (a subdivision of Decca) came out with a recording of Die Entfuhrung in 1990. This also was a historically informed, period instrument interpretation. The late Christopher Hogwood, another pioneer in this field, directed the ensemble he founded, the Academy of Ancient Music. The L'Oiseau Lyre recording I broadcast almost exactly two years ago on Sunday, September 13, 2015. Normally I would not feature this opera again so soon, but the French Harmonia Mundi label came out in 2015 with a "period" take on "The Abduction" that is so good it surpasses all those that have come before it. Rene Jacobs has given us a series of recordings of the Mozart operas which  have opened people's ears to their full freshness and dramatic power. I have broadcast these HM releases as they have been received into our WWUH classical music record library. Jacobs directs the period instrument players of the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin and the Radio Berlin Chamber Choir. Among the assets of the Jacobs take on this Mozart opera are passages of the complete spoken word dialog and appropriate sound effects, plus an additional track of a Turkish march by Michael Haydn inserted into Act One just before the chorus of the Turkish Janissary soldiers.           

 

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH Hartmann, Liden Kirsten Let's look into the history of opera in Scandinavia. Liden Kirsten is a pioneering work of Danish opera. Denmark's leading composer of the nineteenth century, J. P. E. Hartmann (1805-1900) collaborated with the world-famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, whose libretto for "Little Kirsten" incorporates examples of old Danish folk ballads. Hartmann set the ballads to melodies inspired by Danish folk song. "Little Kirsten" is a chivalric romance taking place circa 1100 AD. The opera received its definitive recording through Dacapo Records. That recording was made in 1998 in co-production with Radio Denmark. It employs the musical resources of the  Danish National Radio Symphony and Choir, Michael Schonwandt conducting. I last broadcast Liden Kirsten on Sunday, September 12, 1999. After Hans Christian Andersen, Scandinavia's next most famous writer in the nineteenth century would certainly be the Norwegian playwright Hendrik Ibsen. Norway's most famous composer Edvard Grieg provided the incidental music for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt in 1876. Keep listening for the complete incidental music, which includes solo singing and choral numbers. (Jarvi/ Gothenburg Sympyhony/ Gosta Ohlin's Vocal Ens. /Pro Musica Chamber Choir /Deutsche Grammophon, 1987.)

 

SUNDAY  SEPTEMBER 24TH Verdi, Luisa Miller

With Luisa Miller (1849) Giuseppe Verdi turned the corner into the period of his most famous works, the ones that are considered pillars of the international operatic repertoire. Luisa itself, however, suffered the fate of its predecessors. Like those early "galley slave" works of his, they were all the rage for a  few years upon their introduction on stage, lingered on to the end of the nineteenth century and then disappeared until their general revival in the second half of the twentieth century. In this his fourteenth opera Verdi was really hitting his stride as an opera composer. Verdi's librettist Salvatore Cammarano adapted a play by the eighteenth century German playwright Friedrich Schiller. The story goes to show that a love match between a young nobleman and a peasant girl is bound to end in tragedy. RCA Italiana recorded Luisa Miller  in Rome in with a cast of luminaries from the Met. The Italian-American soprano Anna Moffo was heard in the title role. I broadcast those vintage early stereo RCA LP's way back on Sunday, September 24, 1988. Then on Sunday, November 17, 1996 came a Decca/London CD release of a Luisa Miller taped in 1975 with  the Spanish diva soprano Monserrat Caballe as the beautiful commoner's daughter. Opposite Caballe was the late great tenor Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo, Count Walter's son. Peter Maag was conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra and London Opera Chorus. That Luisa recording is now certainly of historic significance. This Sunday you get to hear Caballe again as Luisa in a 1968 production of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera house, NYC. She was recorded live onstage on February 17, 1968. This time she faces the Met's own tenor Richard Tucker as Rodolfo. The Italian American basso Giorgio Tozzi portrays Count Walter. Thomas Schippers directed the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Although it was taped in the era of stereophonic sound, this Luisa is a monaural recording, an aircheck of what went out in radio broadcast live from the Met. A series of historic recordings from the Met's audio archives were issued through Sony Classical in digitally upgraded sound and in compact disc format. Luisa Miller was released in that series on two CD's in 2012.

 

SUNDAY  OCTOBER 1ST Dvorak, Rusalka I was jinxed the first time I tried to broadcast Antonin Dvorak's Rusalka (1901) on Sunday, May 22,1994. I had hoped to air an old Urania LP set, recorded in mono sound in 1952 in East Germany, setting forth this the greatest of all Czech operas in German language translation. I was unable to get hold of that recording by showtime, so I substituted the much more recent Supraphon CD release of excerpts from the opera in the original Czech. Prior to this 1984 release Supraphon, the Czechoslovak state record label, had recorded Rusalka twice. Their 1984 Rusalka is clearly better than all those that came before it, in no small part because of soprano Gabriela Benackova's soaring interpretation of the title role. Vaclav Neumann directs the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. The complete three act opera was issued on three compact discs. Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) is best known today for his "New World" Symphony no. 9 and for his Slavonic Dances and other orchestral works. He also wrote eight operas, but they are rarely performed outside of his native country. All of Dvorak's music is redolent of Nature, and the beauties of the Bohemian countryside were often the direct inspiration for some of his finest music. Such is the case with the fairy tale opera Rusalka. Thinking about the jinx, the story of Rusalka concerns a magic spell which is ultimately a curse. A water nymph undertakes the spell because she wants to win the love of a mortal prince. Tragic consequences ensue. I last broadcast the 1984 Supraphon Rusalka on Sunday, June 16, 1996.

 

SUNDAY  OCTOBER 8TH Rameau, Les IndesGalantes  Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was the greatest composer of the French baroque, as well as the most important musical theoretician of his age. He should rightly be ranked alongside his contemporaries J. S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. Rameau took to composing French opera only later in his life. He was fifty years old when his first one Hippolyte et Aricie premiered in 1733. Les Indes Galantes followed in 1735 and he penned many more right up until the time of his death at age eighty one. I first broadcast Les Indes Galantes way back on Sunday, September 22, 1985 working from CBS Masterworks stereo LP's. Previously I had broadcast CBS Masterworks releases of Rameau's Le Temple de la Gloire (1747-48) on Sunday, December 11, 1983 and Hippolyte et Aricie on Sunday, April 29, 1984. All three recordings featured the period instrumental group La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy, founded and directed by Jean-Claude Malgoire. Like John Eliot Gardiner and Christopher Hogwood, Malgoire was a pioneer in the field of authentic baroque practice. In Les Indes Galantes Rameau aimed at providing the opera-going public of Paris with a truly international spectacle. "Love around the world" is the theme of this galant ballet heroique, as it was styled. Dancers representing the European nations of France, Italy, Spain and Poland take part in the prologue. The four acts of the opera are separate romantic vignettes set in Turkey, Peru, Persia and the rainforest of  the Amazon. "Make love, not war!" is a tacit sub-theme throughout. When I last aired Les Indes Galantes that CBS Masterworks release was not at all new. The original 1974 recording was reissued in 2016 on three compact discs through Sony Classical.

    

SUNDAY  OCTOBER 15TH Rossini,Tancredi This is Gioacchino Rossini's first great opera seria, written for the illustrious Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 1813, when the composer was a mere twenty one years of age. Tancredi took Europe by storm. It remained so popular that it influenced Wagner half a century later, when he quoted a Rossini tune in a chorus in Die Meistersinger. Rossini changed the original happy ending of the opera for a revival in Ferrara, giving it a  surprising tragic twist. The  music for the alternate final scene, when the mortally wounded knight is married to his beloved Amenaide, was rediscovered in the early 1970's. The American diva Marilyn Horne championed the Ferrarese death scene. She made it her own in the 1985 CBS Masterworks release of Tancredi, recorded live in performance in co-production with the Italian record label Fonicetra. Ralf Weikert conducts the La Fenice theater orchestra and chorus. Keep in mind that the role of the knight Tancredi was taken by a mezzo. In the eleventh century AD the noble knight defended Christian Sicily against the Muslim invaders from North Africa. Tancredi's betrothed Amenaide is soprano Lella Cuberli. I have  broadcast the CBS Masterworks LP release of Tancredi twicebefore, first on Sunday, November 10, 1985 when it was a brand new acquisition to our WWUH record library, and again on Sunday, November8, 2009.  

 

SUNDAY  OCTOBER 22ND Pergolesi, Adriano in Siria  In the first half of the eighteenth century there was what has been called the "Neapolitan School" of opera composers. The only one of these Neapolitans whose name is remembered today is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36), and the only opera he is remembered for is the short one act comic intermezzo La Serva Padrona (1733). Pergolesi helped to create the genre of the Italian opera buffa. He wrote a few full length comic operas and he turned out serious lyric theaterworks, too. One of these is Adriano in Siria (1734). Pergolesi worked from a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. In the mid eighteenth century Metastasio's wordbooks were set to music again and again. They set the standard in Italian opera seria at the  end of the baroque. In Adriano in Siria Metastasio concocted a totally fictional story about the Roman emperor Hadrian. This opera's got it all: the conflict between love and duty, intrigue both amorous and political, disguise, a faked murder and arson,to boot! The fabulous castrato singing star Caffarelli took the role of Parnaspe, prince of Parthia, when Adriano premiered at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. Adriano the emperor was portrayed by a female soprano in what's called a "breeches role." High voices were always favored in baroque opera. In place of the castrato voice in the world premiere recording of Adriano in Siria we hear the countertenor Franco Fagioli, and another high-voiced male singer Yuriy Mynenko was cast as Adriano. This opera seria was produced for concert performance in the studios of Radio Cracow in Poland. Jan Tomasz Adamus conducted the period instrumentalists of the Capella Cracoviensis. Decca released Adriano in Siria on three compact discs in 2016.     

 

SUNDAY  OCTOBER 29TH Gilbert & Sullivan, The Sorcerer Among the comic operas in the G & S

canon Ruddigore (1887) is certainly appropriate for Halloweentide broadcast. I presented an old Decca/London LP recording of it (Godfrey/D'Oyly Carte Opera Co.) on Sunday, October 30, 1983 and again on Halloween Sunday, 1993. The Sorcerer (1877) is equally suitable as Halloween fare, but until very recently I had difficulty finding a recording of it. In fact, this early G & S collaboration has been neglected in the discography. The Sorcerer has been available on compact disc since 2005 courtesy of the American Albany Records label. Albany has given us the first complete recording on two CD's. It provides all of Sir Arthur Sullivan's tuneful score and W. S. Gilbert's witty spoken dialogue. Long before Harry Potter there was the Victorian sorcerer Mr. John Wellington Wells. J. W. Wells was a consummate spellmaker and was quite commercially successful at his craft. Moreover, he's a lot more entertaining than that boy Harry. The Sorcerer was not recorded in some British Savoyard production, but by the American Ohio Light Opera Company, who staged it for their 2005 festival. Ohio Light Opera's Ted Christopher is hilarious as Wells.

    That Albany Records release of The Sorcerer comes out of my own collection of G & S recordings. Also drawn from my own holdings of opera on compact disc are the Supraphon recording of Dvorak's Rusalka, Rameau's Les Indes Galantes and Adriano in Siria by Pergolesi. Our Town on New World CD's was loaned for broadcast by Rob Meehan, former classics deejay here at WWUH and a specialist collector of the "alternative" classical music styles of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. All the other recordings featured in this two-month period of programming come from the WWUH classical music record library. As always, I must thank our station's operations director Kevin O'Toole for mentoring me in the preparation of these notes for cyber-publication.