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Here is a link to CT Blues Society with events and venues.

The series consists of six consecutive Monday evenings of live jazz in downtown Hartford’s Bushnell Park, featuring locally and internationally recognized musicians, all in a comfortable, relaxed outdoor setting. If you are unable to attend, all concerts will be broadcast live on WWUH 91.3 FM or online at wwuh.org In the event of rain, concerts will be live streamed on the Hartford Jazz Society's Facebook page.

We're deep into summer and music surrounds us. Luckily there are five Mondays this month so we can bring you a lot more cool music on Boomers Paradise, Mondays from 1-4 pm with your host, The Turtle Man.

We kick off the month with another listen to the albums released in 1972, this time in August and songs with "music" in the song title.

Next up is a return to the world of Billboard Top 40 One Hit Wonders, rock songs featuring the sitar and a variety of groups showcasing great vocal harmonies.

It's on to the wonderful world of songs with memorable ear worm musical riffs and songs with rain, fog or snow in the song title.

We next delve in the world psychedelia from the U.S. and U.K. throwing in a bit of girl group tunes.

Finally, we end the month with another quarter in the jukebox, press a button and see what's playing.

Please join me each week where the music lives on.

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Rossini: Il Turco in Italia

Kern: Showboat

Fall: Die Kaiserin

Delius: Koanga

SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA

Programming for the month of August, 2022 

SUNDAY AUGUST 7TH Rossini, Il Turco in Italia Although they weren't much impressed with it, the first night audience in Milan naturally regarded Gioacchino Rossini's Il Turco in Italia (1814) as the obvious sequel to his highly successful L'Italiana in Algieri. True, there are similarities to be found in these two masterpieces of the Italian opera buffa. But Rossini wrote all new music for "The Turk in Italy." He borrowed nothing from "The Italian Girl in Algiers, " or any of his previous operas (unusual for him). "The Turk" played all over Europe, then fell out of the repertoire in the mid nineteenth century. The opera has been successfully revived in the mid twentieth century. The great Maria Callas sang the role of Fiorilla to thunderous acclaim in Rome in 1950 and again in Milan in 1955. in 1982 "The Turk" was recorded for the Italian Fonicetra label, with no less a diva than Monserrat Caballe as Fiorilla. That recording, with baritone Samuel Ramey as Prince Selim, was aired on this program on Sunday, August 9,1987. a decade later came the 1992 Philips recording of conductor Neville Marriner's interpretation of the new Rossini Edition of the score, broadcast on Sunday, August 10,1997. Another more nearly complete recording of "The Turk" was made in Italy in 2003 and released through the Naxos label. The Naxos CD's I utilized on Sunday, August 6,2006. The1955 mono recording is still in circulation in silver disc reissue. Also of historical interest by way of comparison is a 2008 Urania CD release of a 1958 radio broadcast in monaural sound from the studios of RAI Radio Italy Milan. Starring as Fiorilla is another great soprano and contemporary of Madam Callas: Graziella Sciutti, who could be considered a Callas rival. Heard opposite Sciutti as Selim is another famous name in the mid twentieth century operatic scene: baritone Sesto Bruscantini. Nino Sanzogno conducts the chorus and orchestra. In audition I found the sound quality of the old RAI airtape to be remarkably good in digital transfer. The Opera d'Oro label previously released this 1958 "Turk" on compact disc. Of that CD issue Fanfare reviewer David L. Kirk wrote,"Graziella Sciutti has just the right mixture of charm and cunning vixen for Fiorilla...Sciutti is delightful from beginning to end...Sesto Bruscantini's Selim, the Turk visiting Italy, is infused with warmth and a sunny disposition needed to make the character appealing...Nino Sanzogno...moves the action along nicely with sprightly tempos that never seem rushed and bring out the mirth in Rossini's infectious score" (Fanfare, May/June,2004). That score is the old corrupted one with various cuts, extrapolations and inaccuracies. The recitatives have been shortened,too, but I'm convinced you radio listeners will love what you hear.

SUNDAY AUGUST 14TH Kern, Showboat This is the archetypal American musical, which is in part the outgrowth of the European operetta. Unlike the typical vapid musical comedy of the flapper era, this is a serious or dark musical comedy, with a storyline very daring for its day, involving racism and misogyny in the turn-of-the century Southland. Showboat was Kern's single longest composition. It's his acknowledged masterpiece, containing such all-time hit Broadway songs as "Ole Man River." You'll hear it in its entirety as Jerome Kern intended it to be heard at its 1927 preview performance in Washington,DC. Stage revivals of Showboat and the two movie versions of the Dixieland operetta have tended to take the guts out of Edna Ferber's original story and remove the darker sort of music, such as Kern's original overture. There was no definitive score of Showboat to work from until Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations were recovered in 1978. Broadway musical historian John McGlinn reconstructed the whole body of musical numbers (even Kern's deletions) for the 1987 EMI recording starring operatic soprano Frederike von Stade as Magnolia Hawks. McGlinn conducts the London Sinfonietta and Ambrosian Chorus in the studio recording made in London in EMI's prestigious Abbey Road facility. The LP issue of this EMI release I broadcast on Sunday, July 10, 1989. The 1988 CD reissue I presented on Sunday, July 10,1994. Listen to those three EMI CD's again this afternoon.

SUNDAY AUGUST 21ST Fall, Die Kaiserin Leo Fall (1873-1925) was in his time one of the foremost composers of Viennese operetta in its later Silver Age in the early twentieth century. But it was in Berlin, not Vienna where his highly successful Die Kaiserin premiered in 1915. War was constantly in the news, so the audience at Berlin's Metropol, the town's best house for popular musical revue, craved an escape from their wartime worries. Fall gave them what they wanted. He referred to his "Empress" operetta as "A Merry Game with the Rococo." Die Kaiserin is a sentimental romantic comedy that ought to remind you of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. It hearkens back to a glorious semi-mythological Central European past. The Empress in Fall's Die Kaiserin is none other than the iconic Hapsburg monarch of Austria, Maria Teresia. She was the most marriageable young noblewoman in all Europe. The operetta focuses on the love match of the Hapsburg heiress to Duke Francis Stephan of Lorraine. The stage character of Maria Teresia has qualities of the Empress Sissi, the late wife of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. Sissi was a figure beloved by the populace. Duke Francis is a theatrical throwback to the illustrious Prince Eugene of Savoy, Austria's military hero of the eighteenth century. Die Kaiserin was revived onstage in the Summer of 2014 at the Lehar Festival of Bad Ischl, where it was recorded live in performance. Marius Burkert conducts the Franz Lehar Orchestra and Chorus of the Bad Ischl Lehar Festival. Die Kaiserin was issued in 2015 on two CD's through the German cpo label.

SUNDAY AUGUST 28TH Delius, Koanga Every year on the last Sunday in August I make sure to broadcast one of the seven operas of Frederick Delius (1862-1934), in part because I think the music of this "The English Debussy" so beautifully evokes the mood of the lazy, hazy end of Summertime. Since I began lyric theater broadcasting back in the Summer of 1982 I have gone through several complete cycles of the Delius operas. This Summer we come back to Koanga (1904), in which Delius fashioned a Creole tragedy for the lyric stage based on American writer George Cable's book The Grandissime. Delius introduced the element of the conflict between Christianity and the Voodoo religion into the libretto he himself prepared. Delius spent a crucial period in his artistic development in the American Southland. He was tremendously inspired by the hymn singing of the humble Black folk. Koanga premiered in Germany with the libretto translated into German by Delius' wife Jelka. The English language libretto was never entirely satisfactory to begin with, and the opera has suffered for it. Koanga, for all its lush, humid atmospheric beauty, was quickly forgotten. The Washington Opera Society revived it in 1970 with a revised and improved wordbook. Two of the vocal principals in the staged revival sang for the world premiere studio recording made in Kingsway Hall, London and released through EMI on Angel LP's in the United States in 1974. Baritone Eugene Holmes held forth in the title role as Koanga, the African prince and Voodoo priest. Soprano Claudia Lindsey took the role of the mulatto slave woman Palmyra. Bass Raimund Herincx portrayed Don Jose Martinez the plantation owner. Sir Charles Groves conducted the London Symphony Orchestra and John Alldis Choir. That was the recording of Koanga I first presented on the Delius Sunday, August 25,1985, and again on Sunday, August 28,1994. In EMI's vaults there exists another previously unreleased live recording of Koanga made at the Camden Festival in England in 1972. Again Groves leads the London Symphony. Sonically, it is slightly inferior when compared to the studio taping. It has, however, the excitement and immediacy of the live performance in its favor, and it has the lead voices of Holmes and Lindsey. An Italian record label, Intaglio obtained access to the Camden Festival tapes, and issued the 1972 English staged production of Koanga on two compact discs in 1993. That's the recording I drew upon for the Delius Sunday presentation of 1996 and repeated in broadcasts in 2003, 2009 and 2016. You'll hear it again this Sunday, followed by a recording of Delius' masterpiece Sea Drift (1908), a setting of the poetry of Walt Whitman for chorus, orchestra and baritone soloist.    

Keith Brown

http://thevirtuosi.org/

The Hartford Choralehttp://www.hartfordchorale.org/The Hartford Chorale is a volunteer not-for-profit organization that presents, on a symphonic scale, masterpieces of great choral art throughout southern New England and beyond, serving as the primary symphonic chorus for the Greater Hartford community. Through its concerts and collaborations with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and other organizations, the Hartford Chorale engages the widest possible audiences with exceptional performances of a broad range of choral literature, providing talented singers with the opportunity to study and perform at a professional level.

The 73 year old New Britain Symphony Orchestra is a professional orchestra which presents several concerts each season in the Greater New Britain area, performing works from all periods in a wide range of musical styles. In addition to its full orchestra concerts under the direction of Music Director and Conductor, Toshiyuki Shimada, including a free concert for children, members of the orchestra perform in various free chamber music concerts during the concert season.