November 1

1862 Johan Wagenaar

1877 Roger Quilter

1901 Szymon Laks

1934 William Mathias

November 8

1770 Friedrich Witt

1785 Friedrich Kalkbrenner

1850 Karel Komzak II

1883 Sir Arnold Bax

1945 Judith Lang Zaimont

Arnold Bax

Birth: November 8, 1883 in Streatham, London, England

Death: October 3, 1953 in Cork, Ireland

The eldest son of a wealthy Nonconformist family, he enjoyed independent means and was able to devote himself entirely to composition and writing. He described himself as "a brazen romantic," and in some respects could be considered the last of the European post-Romantic school of composers. During his five years at the Royal Academy of Music, Bax was deeply impressed by the poetry of W.B. Yeats, founder of the Irish National Theater. Bax's earlier works, which include the tone-poems In the Faery Hills, The Garden of Fand and Tintagel, are imbued with the spirit of Celtic legend, an interest ignited by his reading Yeats's The Wanderings of Usheen in 1902. In the Fairy Hills, is typical of the fantastic and exotic nature of his orchestral writing, chromatic and opulent, with a broad melodic sweep and luminous harmonies. The Garden of Fand, an imaginative evocation of an ancient legend of sea gods and goddesses, is similarly impressionistic, though less naturalistic, than Debussy's La Mer. Tintagel, inspired by traditional English stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table was composed in 1919 after a holiday in Cornwall and quickly became Bax's most frequently performed work. Living in the shadow of composers like Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Bax received little public recognition until late in life. Up to the late 1930s, his songs, choral works, and chamber music were rarely heard, and, had it not been for a broadening of his style and the championship of Sir Adrian Boult, conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bax would probably be remembered, if at all, for his comparatively youthful works. On a visit to Scandinavia in 1932, Bax met Sibelius and the two composers became friends. While Sibelius' influence is not obvious in Bax's symphonic style, he is clearly indebted to the Finnish master in Winter Legends and The Tale the Pine-Trees Knew. Bax later turned his attention to abstract forms, producing important cycles of string quartets, piano sonatas, concertos, and symphonies. The latter, spanning the years 1923-39, form a substantial body of works, ranging from the angry tones of the First Symphony (inspired by the tragedy of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the death of several Irish friends), through the epic Second Symphony and the Third, which established the hallmark of a closing, serene epilogue, to the more classical Seventh with its variation finale. In addition to the string quartets he produced many other colorful chamber works including the fine Elegiac Trio for flute, viola, and harp, an Irish Elegy for cor anglais, harp, and string quartet, the striking Harp Quintet, and three works for larger forces: a nonet, an octet, and a septet. A composer with great facility, Bax developed a vivid orchestral palette drawn eclectically from Wagner, Richard

Strauss, Debussy, Elgar, and the Russians, all of whom he admired. He wrote plays, novels, and poetry under an Irish pseudonym, Dermot O'Byrne. He was knighted in 1937. In 1942, he was appointed Master of the Kings' Music and in 1943 he published his autobiography, Farewell my Youth. His last work, written to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, is a set of madrigals called What is it like to be young and fair.

November 15

1705 Louis-Gabriel Guillemain

1738 Sir William Herschel

1774 William Horsley

1922 Doreen Carwithen

November 22

1457/8 Jacob Obrecht

1709 (bapt) Frantisek (Franz) Benda

1710 Wilhelm Friedemann Bach

1780 Conradin Kreutzer

1901 Joaquin Rodrigo

1913 Benjamin Britten

1925 Gunther Schuller

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach

Birth: November 22, 1710 in Weimar, Germany

Death: July 1, 1784 in Berlin, Germany

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, was an organist, improviser and composer. When Friedemann was 9, his mother died suddenly. J. S. Bach remarried in December of 1721. J. S. Bach supervised Friedemann's studies in keyboard and composition with great attention. At the age of 16 he went to Merseburg to learn the violin with Johann Gottlieb Graun. In addition to his musical training, Friedemann received formal schooling beginning in Weimar. When J.S. Bach took the post of Cantor of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, he enrolled Friedemann in the associated Thomasschule. On graduating in 1729, Friedemann enrolled as a law student in Leipzig University. After graduation he worked as a musical assistant for his father. Friedemann was appointed in 1733 to the position of organist of the St. Sophia's Church at Dresden. This was a part-time position, allowing him time for more math studies, and composition of operas and ballets for the local Court. In 1746, he became the organist at the Liebfrauenkirche in Hallé, a better position involving not only playing organ in that church, but organizing orchestral performances in the city's three main churches. In 1751, Friedemann married Dorothea Elisabeth Georgi, who was 11 years his junior and who outlived him by 7 years. The couple produced two sons and a daughter. Dorothea was the daughter of a tax collector. The landed estates she inherited caused the family to be placed in a high tax bracket by Halle authorities, who were raising taxes to meet the revenue demands of the Seven Years War. To raise cash for these payments, she sold part of her property in 1770. Friedemann was deeply unhappy in Halle almost from the beginning of his tenure. In 1749 he was involved in a conflict with the Cantor of the Liebfrauenkirche, Gottfried Mittag, who had misappropriated funds that were due to Friedemann. In 1750 the church authorities reprimanded Friedemann for overstaying a leave of absence (he was in Leipzig settling his father's estate). In 1753 he made his first documented attempt to find another post, and thereafter made several others. All these attempts failed. In 1762, he received an appointment as Kapellmeister in

Darmstadt, seemingly a congenial position. But Bach delayed leaving Hallé and lost the job. In June 1764, Friedemann left the job in Halle without any employment secured elsewhere. His financial situation deteriorated so much that in 1768 he re-applied for his old job in Halle, without success. After leaving Halle in 1770, he lived for several years in Braunschweig where he applied in vain for the post of an organist at the St. Catherine's church. Then he moved to Berlin, where he initially was welcomed by the princess Anna Amalia (the sister of Frederick the Great), but later fell into disgrace under still unclear circumstances. He died in poverty in 1784 from a pulmonary disease. Historians have regarded Friedemann as a poor custodian of his father's musical manuscripts, many of which he inherited. However, more recent scholars are uncertain how many were lost. It is known that Friedemann sold some of his father's collection to raise cash to pay debts. Also, his daughter took some of the J.S. Bach manuscripts with her when she moved to America, and these were passed on to descendants, who may have inadvertently destroyed many of them. Friedemann's compositions include many church cantatas and instrumental works, of which the most notable are the fugues, polonaises and fantasias for clavier, and the duets for two flutes. He incorporated more elements of the contrapuntal style learned from his father than any of his three composer brothers, but his use of the style has an individualistic and improvisatory edge which endeared his work to musicians of the late 19th century, when there was something of a revival of his reputation. His music fell generally into the transitional period between Baroque and Classical styles, but it was distinctive and personal.

Joaquin Rodrigo

Birth: November 22, 1901 in Sagunto, Spain

Death: July 6, 1999 in Madrid, Spain

Blind from the age of 3 due to diphtheria, Rodrigo began his musical education early and took lessons in composition with Francisco Antich in Valencia. Rodrigo started composing in 1923, and won a National Prize in 1925 for his Cinco Piezas Infantiles for orchestra. Due to his blindness, Rodrigo always composed in Braille, and later painstakingly dictated the music to a copyist. His first works revealed the influence of Granados, Ravel and Stravinsky, but his individual musical voice was soon heard in the songs, piano works and orchestral pieces composed during the 1920s and 30s. In 1927 he moved to Paris as a pupil of Dukas at the Ecole Normale de Musique. While in Paris, Rodrigo befriended many of the great composers of the time, and received particular encouragement from his fellow Spaniard Manuel de Falla. In 1933 Rodrigo married the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi. They remained inseparable companions until her death in 1997. After returning to Spain in 1934, Rodrigo quickly won, with some help from Falla, the Conde de Cartagena scholarship that allowed him to return to Paris to study musicology with Maurice Emmanuel at the Paris Conservatoire and with André Pirro at the Sorbonne. Some of the most difficult years in Rodrigo's life were in the late 1930s during the Spanish Civil War. His scholarship was cancelled, and he and his wife lived in France and Germany. They made a meager living giving Spanish and music lessons at the Institute for the Blind in Freiburg. But by 1939, they were able to return to Spain. Soon after the première in 1940 of his first concerto, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar, he began to be recognized as one of the leading composers in Spain. Apart from writing a great deal of music during the following years, he was active as an academic and music critic, writing for several newspapers and publishing articles on a wide range of topics. He also worked in the music department of Radio Nacional and for the Spanish National Organization for the Blind (ONCE). In 1947 he was appointed to the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music at Complutense University, Madrid, created especially for him, and in 1950 he was elected to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. During these and subsequent years he made several tours throughout Spain, Europe,

the Americas and Japan, teaching, giving piano recitals and lectures, and attending concerts and festivals of his own music. Distinctions awarded to Rodrigo included the Gran Cruz de Alfonso X el Sabio, the Légion d'Honneur, election as a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts of Belgium to the place left vacant on the death of Benjamin Britten. By the end of his life, he had also received 6 honorary doctorates from universities worldwide. Two significant distinctions in Rodrigo's old age were the conferment of the hereditary titles 'Marqueses de los Jardines de Aranjuez' on the composer and his wife by King Juan Carlos I in 1992, and the award of the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes in 1996. During the second half of the 20th century Rodrigo came to occupy a position in Spanish musical life close to that of Manuel de Falla. Like his mentor, he cultivated a style far removed from the major currents of European musical development and, as with Falla, his music needs to be judged in the context of Spain's classical and traditional music, art and literature. His compositions number around 170, including 11 concertos, numerous orchestral and choral works, 60 songs, some two dozen pieces each for piano and guitar, and music for the ballet, theatre and cinema. His published writings also demonstrate a remarkable breadth of knowledge of music and the arts. Rodrigo's music attracted favorable attention from both critics and performers from the start of his career, first in Valencia and Paris and subsequently worldwide. His first two guitar concertos, Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasía para un gentilhombre, also achieved remarkable popularity. From the late 1970s onwards, however, appreciation of his music began to broaden. Many of the world's great instrumentalists commissioned concertos of him, and he eventually wrote works for, among others, guitarist Andrés Segovia, flutist James Galway, harpist Nicanor Zabaleta, and cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. His forms were traditional and his musical language, drawn from both Classical and nationalist sources, underpinned a melodic gift of remarkable eloquence. He made many of the finest settings of classical Spanish poetry, his guitar pieces are in the main repertory, and his concertos are the most significant such works composed in Spain.

Benjamin Britten

Birth: November 22, 1913 in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England

Death: December 4, 1976 in Aldeburgh, England

Considered by many as the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell, Britten was a musician of wide-ranging talents. Essentially a vocal composer, his operas and song-cycles won wide international acceptance. He never abandoned the principles of tonality and was a 'modern' composer who reached a mass audience. He also produced much music for orchestra and instrumentalists, including symphonies, concerti, and chamber and solo works. He shared with his predecessors Parry, Vaughan Williams, and Holst an intense interest in the work of amateurs and children. His gifts as a pianist and conductor, coupled with the virtuoso nature of his inventiveness, led him to compose music for great performers such as the cellist Rostropovich and the singers Vishnevskaya, Fischer-Dieskau, and Janet Baker. The greatest personal influence on his music was his relationship with the tenor Peter Pears, for whom he created many operatic and vocal roles. Britten's father was a prosperous oral surgeon in the town of Lowestoft. His mother was a leader in the local choral society. When Benjamin's musical aptitude became evident, the family engaged composer Frank Bridge to supervise his musical education. The influence of Bridge in particular was strong and lasting. Britten was at the Royal College of Music 1930- 3, but found the atmosphere uncongenial and resented official refusal to allow him to study with Alban Berg in Vienna. He studied piano with Arthur Benjamin and composition with John Ireland. His astonishing early works include the Sinfonietta and A Boy was Born, and his song-cycle with orchestra Our Hunting Fathers. He worked for the General Post Office Film

Unit, writing music for a dozen short documentaries, the best known being Coal Face and Night Mail. In 1937, for the Boyd Neel String Orchestra's concert at the Salzburg Festival, he wrote the Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge. A steadfast pacifist, Britten left England in 1939 as war loomed over Europe. He and Pears followed their friend the poet W. H. Auden to North America in 1939, staying until 1942. While in New York, performances of his Violin Concerto and Sinfonia da Requiem were given in Carnegie Hall under John Barbirolli. Returning to England, Britten settled at Snape and then Aldeburgh. His opera Peter Grimes was performed at Sadler's Wells on June 7, 1945, a day of importance for English music comparable with the first performance of Elgar's Enigma Variations. His interest in chamber opera led in 1947 to foundation of the English Opera Group and his desire for a festival rooted in English village life led to the Aldeburgh Festival, first held in 1948. The Aldeburgh Festival also featured neglected works by composers whom Britten and his colleagues deemed to deserve reappraisal. Britten excelled not only in his own music. As an accompanist in Schubert he was second to none. He played and conducted Mozart superbly, and conducted major works by Bach, Mahler, Elgar, Schumann, and others. After a major heart operation in 1973 his activities were much reduced. A major strength of Britten's art, which contributes to the dramatic effectiveness of his operas, is his gift for finding an apt, simple, memorable phrase to illustrate a point or situation. He was preoccupied with themes of innocence destroyed, of the persecution of the 'outsider' in society (stemming from his own pacifism and conscientious objection to war service), and of cruelty. These themes found their most impressive outlet in the operas Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Owen Wingrave. If these, and such works as the War Requiem, represent the dark side of his musical personality, the 1953 Coronation opera Gloriana, his splendid Midsummer Night's Dream, the comedy Albert Herring, and a host of choral and instrumental works show a capacity for joy. His instrumental works, in particular the string quartets and cello suites, explore and stretch the players' capacities without ceasing to be musical. Few composers have caught the public's imagination as vividly as did Britten. Each new work was eagerly awaited and absorbed.

November 29

1632 Jean-Baptiste Lully

1797 Gaetano Donizetti

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Birth: November 29, 1632 in Florence, Italy

Death: March 22, 1687 in Paris, France

The son of a miller, Lully had only simple instruction in music during childhood, from a monk who taught him the guitar and the violin. Lully was taken to France by the Chevalier de Guise in 1646 as garçon de chambre and Italian teacher to Louis XIV's cousin, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans. At her court in the Tuileries his musical talents soon attracted attention and he became famous for his skill as a violinist. By the time, in 1652, that Mademoiselle d'Orléans was exiled from Paris because of her sympathy with the Fronde uprising, Lully had made an impression at court for his dancing, and the next year he was taken into court employment as compositeur de la musique instrumentale to Louis XIV, a position that involved writing music for the court ballets and dancing in them. He was admitted to the Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi ("King's 24 violins") but found the band lacking in discipline and obtained permission to set up his own Petits Violons of 16 players. From 1656 to 1664 he trained this ensemble, which became widely famous for its precision. Meanwhile Lully was becoming known as a composer, especially of ballet. In 1660 his ballet entrées for Cavalli's Xerse and Ercole amante attracted more attention than the operas themselves, and the following year Louis made him surintendant de la musique de la chambre

du roi. He became a naturalized French citizen, and a further mark of the royal favor, his appointment as maître de musique to the royal family, enabled him to marry the daughter of the composer Michel Lambert. They had 3 sons, all of whom became musicians, and 3 daughters. Lully continued to compose ballets and in 1664 he wrote entrées for a revival of Pierre Corneille's Oedipe and his first comédie-ballet in partnership with Molière, a collaboration which was to culminate in 1670 with Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. By the end of the 1660s the idea of opera was growing increasingly popular in Paris. A privilege to establish opera academies in France was granted in 1679 to Pierre Perrin. In spite of Lully's initial scorn at the idea of large-scale dramatic works sung in French he was quick to take advantage of Perrin's fall from favor at court and bought his privilege in 1672. Soon after, and following some vicious intrigue, he was granted the right to compose and produce opera at the Académie Royale de Musique, a monopoly he held for the rest of his life. When Lully began composing opera in the 1670s, Italy was the center of great opera. Opera in France was in its infancy. Lully's operas, which were based on Italian models but with French libretto, helped popularize the art form. He went into partnership with the designer Carlo Vigarani, obtained premises in a tennis court, and staged the first tragédie en musique: Cadmus et Hermione, produced in 1673. The libretto was provided by Philippe Quinault, who also wrote texts for ten further tragédies for Lully in spite of the composer's constant criticisms and cuts. Louis then provided him with a theatre, at the Palais Royal. Lully stifled any potential rivals by imposing arbitrary and often crippling limits, as his privilege entitled him to do, on any other theatrical production. For example, no one was permitted to use dancers, more than 2 voices, or more than 6 violins. Lully was unscrupulous in his greed and ambition and capable of ruthless plotting against his rivals. He made numerous enemies. Royal favor saved him from prosecution for homosexual practices, though even Louis reprimanded him on this account in 1685. In the 1680s the court became more sober and restrained in its entertainments, and Lully turned his attention to church music. It was during a performance of his monumental Te Deum before the King in 1687 that Lully struck his foot with his conducting cane (it was normal practice to keep time by striking it upon the floor), and later that year he died after the foot had turned gangrenous. He left a considerable fortune, including five houses in Paris and the monopoly of the performing rights to his music. Lully's primary achievement was the creation of French opera, and with it he established a style tradition that continued to dominate French musical theatre for more than a century. They inspired several controversies among Paris intellectuals (French v. Italian; Lully v. Rameau; French tragédie v. Italian comedy). Lully brought to the composition of lyric drama in French an acute understanding of French declamatory traditions and the non-metric structure of the language, devising a new musical style to accommodate them. He shunned the Italian method of dividing musical numbers into separate recitatives and arias, choosing instead to combine the two for dramatic effect. He devised too a simple form of air, often using a dance rhythm, that could capture faithfully the nature of the sentiment expressed. He also created special scenes, using chorus and dancers, and spectacular divertissements, often with picturesque effects (tempests, sleep scenes, the underworld). His dances, which abound in the operas, are often highly attractive melodically, with unusual rhythmic structures; and his five-part orchestration is rich and resourceful.

Gaetano Donizetti

Birth: November 29, 1797 in Bergamo, Italy

Death: April 8, 1848 in Bergamo, Italy

Donizetti was among the most important composers of bel canto opera in both Italian and French in the first half of the 19th Century. Many of Donizetti's more than 60 operas are still part of the

modern repertoire and continue to challenge singers for their musical and technical demands. Donizetti stands stylistically between Rossini and Verdi. His scenes are usually more expanded in structure than those of Rossini, but he never blurred the lines between set pieces and recitative, as Verdi did in his middle-period and late works. Often compared to his contemporary, Bellini, Donizetti produced a wider variety of operas and showed a greater stylistic flexibility. Donizetti was educated in Bergamo, the town of his birth, studying with the opera composer Simon Mayr from 1806-1814. Because of parental opposition to a musical career, he joined the Austrian army, composing in his off-duty spells. His youthful works include chamber operas, religious works, and chamber music. His opera Enrico di Borgogna was produced in Venice in 1818, and his 4th opera, Zoraida di Granata was so successful in Rome in 1822 that he obtained his release from the army. In the next 8 years he wrote nearly 30 operas which were performed throughout Italy. He continued to work in Naples throughout the 1820's and 1830's, where he was active as both a conductor and composer. In 1830, Donizetti finally achieved international fame with his opera Anna Bolena. Notable for its expressive music and more extended scenes, it established Donizetti as one of the leading opera composers. The comic opera L'elisir d'amore and the tragic Lucrezia Borgia came shortly after. Donizetti's next work was Maria Stuarda, followed the same year by Lucia di Lammermoor, which became an internationally recognized masterpiece. The Elizabethan tragedy Roberto Devereux completed his trilogy of operas that chronicle the English court from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Donizetti's operas from the late 1830s were unable to match the success of Lucia, and when Donizetti was passed over for the directorship of the Naples Conservatory in 1840, he moved to Paris. There he composed the opera comique La fille du Régiment, which was celebrated immediately for its charm and virtuosity. Later that year he completed La favorite, another major contribution to the French repertoire. In 1842 Donizetti was appointed Kapellmeister of the Austrian court in Vienna, but retained his association with Paris. Among Donizetti's last operas are Maria di Rohan, an important historic opera, and his French tragedy Dom Sébastian. Caterina Cornaro is also one of his finest works for its strong dramatic content. These late operas, although rarely performed, are serious works that set the standard for Verdi. His last success was also in Paris, with Don Pasquale in 1843. He became paralyzed and mentally unbalanced as a result of syphilis in 1844. Donizetti's ability to write at great speed has prejudiced attitudes toward the quality of his work. The tendency to underrate the melodic and dramatic content of his operas has only recently been reinterpreted by a willingness to recognize Donizetti's brilliance as a rival in comic opera to Rossini. Recently, several of Donizetti's lesser-known operas have been revived and found to have unsuspected merit. He also composed church music, 19 string quartets, and some orchestral works.

December 6

1550 (bapt) Orazio Vecchi

1642 Johann Christoph Bach

1919 Gideon Klein

1920 Dave Brubeck

1933 Henryk Gorecki

1939 Tomas Svoboda

1955 Bright Sheng

December 20

1728 Franz Xaver Pokorny

1871 Henry Kimball Hadley

1909 Vagn Holmboe

1938 John Harbison

1950 Arturo Márquez

December 27

1890 Maurice Schoemaker

[Biographies derived from Oxford Music Online and Allmusic.com.]

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 4TH Shakespeare, Macbeth Between 1987 and 2014.  I have broadcast various recordings of Verdi's opera Macbeth (1847) on at least four occasions, and then on Sunday, October 28, 2001I broadcast a recording of Ernest Bloch's Macbeth opera (1910). This Sunday I offer you a recording of Shakespeare's original play. Spoken word presentations have always been part of my broad spectrum concept of lyric theater programming. I have broadcast recordings of many of William Shakespeare's plays. Often these were on early stereo Decca/Argo LP's. These studio recordings, made between 1957 and 1964, were part of Decca's series of the complete recorded works of Shakespeare, issued in commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. It was an audio project of historic significance equal to Decca's first-ever complete studio recording series of Wagner's Ring cycle of operas made during the same period with Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and a singing cast of some of the greatest operatic voices of the mid twentieth century. Decca's Shakespeare project engaged renowned director George Rylands and the Marlowe Dramatic Society of Cambridge University, plus other "professional players," who were some of the best Shakespearean actors and actresses that Britain possessed. Many of them remain famous names even now in the twenty first century. In 2016 the entire Decca Shakespeare series- all thirty seven plays, the sonnets and narrative poems- was reissued on compact disc to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the playwright's death. I have acquired the 100 CD Decca/Argo boxed set. I draw upon its discs again this Sunday as I did most recently on Sunday, May 6th of this year with my broadcast of the early comedy Love's Labours Lost. The tragedy of Macbeth was written years later, dating after Hamlet, probably in 1606. Theatrical superstition has it that this is the Bard's jinxed play, and to avoid misfortune its official name must never be uttered in parlance among theater folk. They speak of it only as "the Scottish play." Macbeth is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies. Even the poetic versification of the play is terse, compacted and constrained. The delivery of so many of the lines is rapid fire to the point of throw-away. This quality of the verse contributes to the overall mood of the play, rendering it so dark and spooky. The bloody doings of the story surely suit the dark and dismal month of November. Macbeth, the ill-fated Thane of Cawdor, is Tony Church. Lady Macbeth is Irene Worth. 

 

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 11TH Wagner, Gotterdammerung, Prologue and Act One, The Wagner Project. The amount of daylight is fading fast as we head towards the darkest time of the year, the Winter solstice. Now is indeed the autumnal twilight time. There's no better time than now to listen to the tragic fourth and last opera of Richard Wagner's "Ring Cycle" tetralogy, called in his native German Der Ring des Nibelungen. In German this last opera of "The Ring" is known as Gotterdammerung (1876). In English language we call it "The Twilight of the Gods." Wagner's music dramas were conceived on a monumental scale. Wagner designed his own commensurately large opera house specifically for the performance of these works. After much delay and at great expense the Festspielhaus was finally built in the Franconian town of Bayreuth. It was there for the opening festival season in 1876 that "Twilight of the Gods" was first staged as part of the complete Ring Cycle. Annual festivals followed at Bayreuth. The Ring Cycle is at the very heart of the Bayreuth Festival repertory. Recording the entire Ring Cycle is indeed a monumental project. There have been some wonderful and historic recorded Ring Cycles undertaken by some of the eminent Wagnerian conductors of the twentieth century. I think immediately of Furtwangler's Cycle in the 1950's and Solti's in the 1960's. (I broadcast the Furtwangler "Twilight" on mono LP's on Sunday, June 21, 1992.) This Sunday I offer you a Gotterdammerung of our time. It was recorded live in performance at the 2008 Bayreuth Festival. Christian Thielemann undertook the Ring and received accolades for his recorded interpretation. There's a problem with broadcasting Thielemann's "Twilight." Most of Wagner's operas are so long they won't fit into my three and a half hour timeslot. I am forced to split up my presentation over two Sundays. This Sunday you will hear the lengthy Prologue and Act One, which comes on the first two of the four Opus Arte compact discs released in 2009. There will be time remaining for me to air tracks from The Wagner Project, a two-CD compilation of extensive recorded highlights from the canon of Wagner operas. The Wagner Project was issued in 2017 through the French Harmonia Mundi label. All the various tracks were recorded in Stockholm in 2016 with Daniel Harding conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Wagner Project is dominated by the compelling voice of German baritone Matthias Goerne.

 

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18TH Wagner, Gotterdammerung, Acts Two and Three, The Wagner Project.  Yes, we complete "Twilight of the Gods" on this second Sunday of its presentation. But this is also the Sunday that "Sunday Afternoon at the Opera" participates in our station's annual Fall Fundraiser. During the course of the afternoon I will be going on mike to urge you listeners, you lovers of opera and supporters of "lyric theater" programming on WWUH, to phone in your pledges to the weeklong fundraising effort. You faithful listeners have never failed to help us meet or even exceed our fundraising goals in seasons past, so I thank you in advance for your generosity.  

 

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 25TH Heggie, Great Scott.  An American opera provides a feast for the ears on the Sunday following the big Thanksgiving holiday repast. Jake Heggie (b. 1961) is one of the hottest composers on the contemporary American opera scene. He achieved his big breakthrough into that scene with his acclaimed Dead Man Walking (2000), the world premiere recording of which I broadcast on Sunday, February 22, 2004. Most recently, Heggie's Christmas opera It's A Wonderful Life, inspired by the movie of the same name, went over the air on this program on Christmas Eve Sunday of 2017. Great Scott is an opera about opera. The leading character of the title is a fictitious American lyric mezzo of our time, one Arden Scott. She has uncovered the manuscript score of a long lost belcanto opera. She has persuaded the director of the American Opera company to take the colossal risk of a world premiere production of the 1835 Rosa Dolorosa by Vittorio Bazzini, in which she will take the starring role. Much intrigue ensues. A truly great real life American mezzo of our time, Joyce DiDonato, stars as Arden Scott. The world premiere of Jake Heggie's Great Scott, his American Opera in two acts, with libretto by Terence McNally, was recorded live in performance, October 30, 2015 in Dallas, Texas at the Winspear Opera House. Great Scott was jointly commissioned and produced by Dallas Opera and San Diego Opera. Patrick Summers conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of The Dallas Opera. Great Scott was released earlier this year on two Erato compact discs through Parlophone/Warner Music Group.

 

SUNDAY DECEMBER 2ND Britten, St. Nicholas, The Night of St. Nicholas.  This man is one of the single most popular worthies in all of Christendom. Many quaint stories are told about the fourth century bishop of Myra. He is the figure behind our contemporary image of Santa Claus. His feast day is upcoming on December sixth, so this Sunday's programming is devoted to his honor. First comes the Saint Nicholas cantata of Benjamin Britten. This work from 1948 is a species of sacred drama originally intended for performance by a combined choir of voices from three English boys' schools and one girls' school, accompanied by piano, organ, strings and percussion. A solo tenor takes the part of the saint, singing words by Eric Crozier. When the composer himself recorded Saint Nicholas for Decca in 1957 his lover tenor Peter Pears took the title role. Britten directed the Aldeburgh Festival Choir and Orchestra, with young singers drawn from schools thereabout. Decca remastered the early stereo tapes for reissue on a single CD in 2005 as part of a multidisc set, "Britten Conducts Britten." I last broadcast the Saint Nicholas cantata on Sunday, December 7, 2008.

   Several times before I have aired the 1982 Music Masters recording of a twelfth century liturgical drama about the life of the saint. There's a recent CD release of liturgical music for St. Nicholas drawn mostly from the fourteenth   century English Salisbury Antiphon manuscript. The Night of Saint Nicholas: A Medieval Liturgy for Advent presents the near totality of the Roman Catholic holy office for the feast day (and preceding evening) of the beatified bishop and confessor (December 6th). The text is in ecclesiastical Latin, sung by the five voices of I Cantori Gregoriani, who also ring handbells. These choristers are joined by the vocalists and instrumentalists of the La Reverdie ensemble. The instruments include the medieval psaltery, the vielle (a medieval fiddle), an ancient harp, the cithara (a medieval guitar), drum and bells. The recording was made in an ancient parish church in Modena, Italy in 1998. The French Arcana label released The Night of Saint Nicholas on a single compact disc in 2017.

 

SUNDAY DECEMBER 9TH Massenet, Esclarmonde.    Only a few of the many operas of Jules Massenet, like his Manon (1884) and Thais (1894) or Werther (1892) continue to hold the operatic stage to the present day. Consider Massenet's Le Cid (1885), a chivalric piece which remained popular before the First World War but thereafter faded into obscurity. (I have broadcast a recording of Le Cid a couple of times.) Such also was the fate of Esclarmonde, a medieval romance for the lyric stage with exotic and magical elements. The premiere of Esclarmonde coincided with the opening of the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris, for which the Eiffel Tower had been specially constructed. Parisian audiences went into raptures over Esclarmonde. After a long run at the Opera Comique it did the rounds of Europe's great opera houses, but by the dawn of the twentieth century it was gone from the repertoire. Even the composer discouraged further performances of it, although it remained his personal favorite to the end. The late great diva Joan Sutherland was responsible for the 1975 recorded revival of Esclarmonde in which she sang the title role. Her husband Richard Bonynge directed the National Philharmonic Orchestra of the UK and the John Alldis Choir. The British Decca/London record label released Esclarmonde on three stereo LP's. I last presented this recording on Sunday, May 15,1988.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 16TH Weinberger, Schwanda the Bagpiper. This is the one and only lyric stagework that Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967) is known for. He composed many other things, including film scores in later life. Weinberger died in a rest home in Florida of an overdose of sedatives: presumably a suicide. Weinberger's talents peaked too early in his career. He was only thirty one when Schwanda premiered in Prague, the Czech national capital, in 1927. It was a tremendous success; its libretto was translated into seventeen other languages. Czech was the original language, but the opera is known to the world at large in its German language version as Schwanda Dudelsackpfeiffer. Schwanda is emphatically a Czech folk opera. The story is based on an old Bohemian legend, with elements of the grotesque and burlesque, magic and fairy tale romance. And wouldn't you know that in that very musically inclined Central European national culture a musician would be the hero of the piece! Schwanda is a Bohemian peasant and a damned good bagpipe player. The legendary highwayman Babinsky tempts the hero to leave his native village and his wife Dorotka. Schwanda has a series of adventures in foreign parts. In the end he must bargain with the Devil for possession of his soul. Schwanda cheats the Devil at cards and is released from Hell to return to his beloved Dorotka. Schwanda in its German version was recorded for the German CBS Masterworks label in 1979. The recording originated as a radio broadcast from the studios of Bavarian Radio Munich. The world premiere recording of Schwanda was first issued on LP's in 1981. I presented the LP release way back on Sunday, August 11, 1985. This Sunday you get to hear the folk opera again in compact disc reissue. Heinz Wallberg directs the Munich Radio Orchestra. The distinguished baritone Hermann Prey is heard as Schwanda. His wife Dorotka is soprano Lucia Popp. The robber Babinsky is tenor Siegfried Jerusalem and bass Siegmund Nimsgern takes the role of the Devil. Also heard in singing capacity is the Bavarian Radio Chorus.

 

SUNDAY DECEMBER 23RD Musgrave, A Christmas Carol I had originally intended to broadcast this Christmas opera many holiday seasons ago on Sunday, December 23,1984, but was prevented. Scottish composer Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) was commissioned by Virginia Opera Association to compose this opera. She prepared her own libretto from Charles Dickens' famous story. Musgrave had already triumphed in 1977 with the premiere of her opera Mary, Queen of Scots by Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh International Festival. An LP recording of that Musgrave opera I broadcast on Sunday, March 1, 1987. The recording of A Christmas Carol I wanted to air was the world premiere on disc, capturing the world premiere performance by Virginia Opera on December 16, 1979. The Moss Music Group LP release was produced from tapes recorded during a live broadcast of A Christmas Carol by National Public Radio in cooperation with member station WHRO-FM, Norfolk, VA. Peter Mark conducts the Virginia Opera Association Orchestra, with a large singing cast headed by baritone Frederick Burchinal as Ebenezer Scrooge.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 30TH Cimarosa, Il Matrimonio Segreto.   On this last Sunday of 2018, looking towards New Year's Eve festivities, an opera that is festive, joyous and comic is called for. Cimarosa's Italian comic opera, its title translated as 'The Secret Marriage," certainly fills the bill. Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) was one of the most admired and most prolific composers of Neapolitan-style comic opera, known in Italian as opera buffa. (He wrote more than fifty such works and other kinds of opera as well.) Although Mozart and Rossini overshadow him today, the Viennese public at the time of the first production of this opera buffa in 1792 liked his "Secret Marriage" more than Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. The Austrian emperor Leopold II liked Cimarosa's comic opera so much he commanded a second performance of the whole thing on the same night as its premiere. The source of Il Matrimonio Segreto is found in an English stage comedy that played at London's Drury Lane Theatre in 1766. Giovanni Bertati's Italian language adaptation of that play gave Cimarosa just the libretto he needed to write what remains his most famous lyric theaterwork. There have been a number of recordings made of Il Matrimonio Segreto. I have aired two of the older ones. On Sunday, April 21, 1985 came the 1977 Deutsche Grammophon LP release (Barenboim/English Chamber Orchestra) and then on Sunday, August 15, 2010 an even older three LP set from 1968 under the American Everest label, but originally issued by the Italian Fonicetra record company (Manno Wolf-Ferrari/Maggio Musicale Fiorentino). Now comes the very latest recording of Cimarosa's buffa masterpiece. It was made in September of 2017 in the Luigi Frescucci Auditorium in Florence. Simone Perugini directs the Harmoniae Templum Chamber orchestra. The RC Record Classic label released it that same year on three compact discs.