WWUH Classical Programming 

September/October 2019

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera

Sun, 1:00 - 4:30 pm

Evening Classics

Weekdays 4:00 to 7:00/ 8:00 pm

Drake's Village Brass Band

Mondays 7:00-8:00 pm

SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA
your "lyric theater" program
with Keith Brown
programming selections for the months of September and October, 2019

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1ST Blitzstein, The Cradle Will Rock This Depression-era agitprop American opera is perfect for programming on the Sunday before the Labor Day holiday. Opera??!! Isn't it really in the genre of American musical comedy? Blitzstein simply called his dark musical, which certainly has satirical and comic content, a "play with music." He wrote book and lyrics for it, as well as the music. Because of his long association with the political left Marc Blitzstein (1905-64) was a notorious figure. His hot potato of a musical almost didn't come off in its original 1937 Broadway production. Blitzstein's life and music are discussed in detail in Mark the Music (St. Martin's Press, 1989), the first definitive biography of the composer. I interviewed the author, my old WWUH radio colleague Eric Gordon, producer of "None of the Above" (1973-77), for broadcast on my opera program. Despite such a difficult start, The Cradle Will Rock did not completely disappear from the annals of American musical theater. It was revived at Theater Four in New York City in 1964. Blitzstein was a powerful influence on his younger colleague and friend Leonard Bernstein, who was musical consultant for the revival and subsequent mono LP recording. You heard that recording in its CRI CD reissue on Labor Day Sunday of 1990. Then there was the original cast recording from 1937, available in digitally reprocessed sonic upgrade for release on compact disc in the Pearl series of historically significant recordings of the earlier twentieth century. That I broadcast on Sunday, September 3, 2000. The original cast recording has only piano accompaniment for the singers. When Cradle was again revived, this time by Opera Saratoga in 2017, Blitzstein's 1937 orchestral score was restored. That specialist in the history of the American lyric theater John Mauceri conducted the orchestra and singing cast. A live performance of the staged production at Saratoga Springs, NY was captured for posterity and issued on two Bridge compact discs. There's no need to revisit here the dramatic and crazy story about the first performance of The Cradle Will Rock, because Mark Blitzstein himself will tell you all about it. He discusses his labor opera in a tape recording preserved in the Gilmore Music Library at Yale. That recording is piggybacked on the Bridge release of what must now be recognized as the definitive complete recording of Blitzstein's work.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8TH Debussy, Pelleas et Melisande Claude Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1902) was the composer's only completed excursion into full-fledged operatic form. Pelleas is the fulfillment of a creative urge going back to Debussy's youth as early as 1889, when he saw and was much impressed by a production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at Beyreuth. After a fairly successful premiere in Paris Debussy continued revising his opera until 1907, by which time it was becoming known throughout Europe. Pelleas is not at all in Wagner's vein of music drama. Like Tristan, however, it presents upon the lyric stage a page out of the literature of medieval courtly love. Pelleas has a not-so-courtly extramarital affair with the wife of his own much older brother. The libretto of Pelleas et Melisande was derived from a stage play by the controversial Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, who was a contemporary of the composer. Maeterlinck's tragic drama is set forth in the sweetly haunting melodic phrases and pastel tonal colorations so characteristic of Debussy's impressionistic style. Debussy also took great care to fit his music to the phrasing of the French language. This Sunday will be the fifth time over a span of three decades of opera broadcasting when I have presented Debussy's Drame lyrique. It has a considerable discography. There's the live taping of the production of Pelleas from the 1963 summer opera festival at Glyndebourne in the UK, issued on compact disc in the twenty first century under the opera house's own proprietary label. That Glyndebourne Pelleas, with Vittorio Cui conducting the Royal Philharmonic, I broadcast on Sunday, October 25, 2010. Before that, on Sunday, September 22, 2002 came a Naïve recording of a live concert performance broadcast over Radio France from the Theatre des Champs Elysses in March of 2000. Bernard Haitink was conducting the National Orchestra and Chorus of Radio France. Today, however, we reach even farther back into lyric theater programming history on WWUH with a studio recording of Pelleas et Melisande made by EMI in 1969/70. I have aired this particular Pelleas twice, first on EMI/Angel LP's on Sunday, October 13, 1985 and again when it was reissued on compact disc through Sony Classical on Sunday, September 27, 1992. Pierre Boulez was a renowned interpreter of the classical repertoire of the twentieth century. Boulez leads the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Our Pelleas is English tenor George Shirley. Melisande is the Swedish soprano Elizabeth Soderstrom.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15TH Puccini, Manon Lescaut Over the years I have broadcast recordings of all the familiar works in the canon of Giacomo Puccini's operatic output. I'm surprised to note that I have never previously presented Puccini's first big operatic success, Manon Lescaut (1893), even though I twice aired a recording of his second opera Edgar (1889), on Sunday, May 22, 1988 and on Sunday, September 4, 2016. It was a Columbia Masterworks LP release, recorded in 1977 in live concert performance at Carnegie Hall, with Eve Queler conducting the New York City Opera Orchestra. The two big stars in this production were tenor Carlo Bergonzi and soprano Renata Scotto. Curiously, on Sunday, September 3, 1989 I did in fact broadcast a Manon opera, but it was by the French composer Auber, a work that was first produced in 1856. Massenet came out with a very successful Manon opera in 1884. So before Puccini took up the story, ultimately derived from the 1731 French novel by the Abbe Prevost, Manon was already a popular and familiar literary character on the lyric stage. Puccini's Manon premiered in Turin. When it came to the Metropolitan Opera in 1907 Lina Cavalieri sang in the title role, with Caruso as des Grieux. Listen today for a vintage 1954 mono recording of Manon Lescaut made in Rome with Jonel Perlea conducting the Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. Legendary soprano Licia Albanese is the girl Manon, the nobleman Chevalier des Grieux is none other than the immortal Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling. I make use this afternoon of a 1969 RCA Victrola LP reissue of this landmark recording of Puccini's early masterpiece. It was, at the time of its issue on disc, only the third complete recording of the work. (The first one dates back to 1931.)

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND Tchaikovsky, Pique Dame It's been a long time since I last presented Peter Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame or "The Queen of Spades" (1890). Actually, I aired recordings of it on two occasions, first on Sunday, February 7,1988 (Angel/Melodiya LP's, Bolshoi Theatre, Boris Khaikin, cond.) and then Sunday, April 17, 1991 (Sony Classical CD's, Bulgarian National Opera, Emil Tchakarov, cond.). The composer's brother Modest supplied him with a libretto based upon Alexander Pushkin's 1824 novella. In Tchaikovsky's operatic treatment of the story the young military man Hermann is not simply a coldhearted monomaniacal cardshark. Also, there is no double suicide in Pushkin's original telling of the tale. Along with his Yevgeny Onegin (1877), Tchaikovsky's Pikovaya Dama ranks as one of the greatest of all Russian operas. Today you will hear "The Queen of Spades" as recorded not in Moscow or Sofia, but in Tel Aviv in Israel, with Vladimir Jurowski leading the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Gary Bertini Israeli Choir. Starring as Hermann in this concert recording of the work, made in the Smolarz Auditorium in November of 2012, is the Ukrainian tenor Oleg Kulko. Mezzo Nina Romanova is the Countess, the "Queen of Spades" herself, and her niece Lisa is soprano Karina A. Flores. Like them, most of the rest of the singing cast is Russian born and musically trained in Moscow. The UK label Helicon Classics, Ltd. released Pique Dame on two compact discs in 2015.

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 29TH Reichardt, Die Geisterinsel If you like Mozart's "Magic Flute" I feel sure you will also like this Singspiel by one of Mozart's slightly older contemporaries, Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814). Within the German speaking culture of Central Europe at the end of the eighteenth century there was a sub-genre of opera devoted to fantasy, legend, exotic settings, magic and the supernatural. This genre continued into the early nineteenth century with Romantic works like Weber's Der Freischutz. This particular Singspiel, first produced in Berlin in 1798, was Reichardt's most successful lyric stagework. It was commissioned for celebrations in honor of the new king of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm III. Die Geisterinsel ("The Isle of Spirits") is a German language adaptation of Shakespeare's fantastical drama The Tempest. Goethe saw and heard the Singspiel and pronounced it "a masterpiece of poetry and language: it is impossible to imagine anything more musical." What is presumably the world premiere recording of Reichardt's Die Geisterinsel was released in 2017 through the German cpo record label. It presents on two compact discs a studio production for broadcast over West German Radio of Cologne, this production actually recorded not in Cologne but neighboring Wuppertal in 2002 in the opera house there, and apparently not before a theater audience. Hermann Max directs the period instrument ensemble Das Kleine Konzert, augmented by the chorus of the Rheinische Kantorei, with a singing cast of nine solo voices. About this cpo release reviewer Bill White wrote, "This opera will in all probability never receive a more congenial hearing, as the singing and music-making on these discs is quite outstanding." (Fanfare, Nov/Dec 2018 issue.)

SUNDAY OCTOBER 6TH Mayr, I Cherusci It was a German composer, Johann Simon Mayr who brought Italian opera from the eighteenth into the nineteenth century. Born in Bavaria in 1763, Mayr was a little younger than the Austrian Mozart and a little older than the Rhinelander Beethoven. He long outlived both of them, dying in 1845. Mayr's career was spent largely in Italy. He Italianized his name. His operas continued to be performed in Italy and elsewhere up to circa 1850. For a while his works rivaled in popularity those of Rossini. It is therefore hard to believe how Mayr's operas in later times could be so completely forgotten. Now in the twenty first century a conductor from Bavaria, Franz Hauk has championed the cause of Mayr's music. In 2017 the Naxos record label came out with Hauk's recorded interpretation of Telemacho (1797), an opera seria in the style of Gluck. That recording I broadcast on Sunday, November 12, 2017. Mayr also composed works in the genre of the Italian opera buffa. In 2016 Naxos released the world premiere recording of the comic opera Amore non soffre oposizione ("Love Will Not Tolerate Opposition," 1810), which went over the air last year on Sunday, August 12TH. We return to a serious Italian dramma per musica by Mayr this Sunday, one which also received its world premiere recording through Naxos. Hauk conducts from the harpsichord the Concerto de , Bassus period instrument orchestra and members of the Bavarian State Opera Chorus, with vocal soloists in I Cherusci (1808). This opera is set in ancient Germania around the time of the birth of Christ. The Teutonic tribe known to the Romans as the Herusci annihilated two entire Roman legions led by the general Varus in 9 AD. The leader of the tribe was a certain Germanicus or Hermann. In Mayr's opera the king of the Cherusci is named Treuta. He Falls in love with a captive slave girl from another tribe, and tries to save her from the Druids, who would make her a sacrificial victim. Mayr's music for I Cherusci has some conservative features hearkening back to the eighteenth century. There's a lot of secco recitative with harpsichord accompaniment, and the male role of Tamaro was originally written for a castrato. In this studio recording the role is handled by a female soprano. Without knowing who actually wrote the music, the listener might well wonder is this very late Mozart, or very early Rossini? Mayr's style in opera bridges the gap between the two of them. I think you will discover I Cherusci to be a barbarian delight.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 13TH Johnson, Considering Matthew Shepard On October 12,1998 twenty one year old college student Matthew Shepard died of grievous wounds sustained a week before in a savage homophobic attack. Matt was openly gay, and his death received national media attention. He became overnight the poster boy for the cause of LGBT civil rights. He could even be regarded as a martyr for the cause; his bones now reside in the National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, DC. Matthew Shepard's victimization inspired a major work of dramatic art, Moyses Kaufman's The Laramie Project (2008), as well as various works of musical art-songs like Melissa Etheridge's "Scarecrow," but also an entire oratorio, Considering Matthew Shepard (2016) by choral director Craig Hella Johnson (b. 1962). This was Johnson's first composition
on such a large scale. The Matthew Shepard Foundation endorsed and praised his work as "a priceless tribute to Matt." For the world premiere recording of Considering Matthew Shepard Johnson conducts his own Conspirare vocal ensemble, joined by an ensemble of eight instrumentalists. Considering Matthew Shepard was released on two compact discs through Harmonia Mundi USA. Following the premiere of the oratorio in concert performance by Conspirare in 2016, Considering Matthew Shepard was taken up by other prestigious choral groups. Connecticut's own Concora performed it in November of 2018 in Hartford's "music church," Asylum Hill Congregational. I have previously broadcast tracks from the HM-USA world premiere release of the Conspirare studio recording on the other radio program I do on WWUH, "Gay Spirit," our local LGBTQ newsprogram. This Sunday afternoon, however, I'm proud to present the entire oratorio. In auditioning the recording I found it quite interesting to assess the musical influences Craig Hella Johnson has absorbed in his very eclectic composition. There's Bach chorales and Black American a capella stylings like those of Sweet Honey in the Rock, also Eastern Orthodox choir music as translated into Western terms a la John Tavener. There are even cowboy songs reminding us of Matt's native state of Wyoming. A spoken word narrator guides the listener through the tragic story.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 20TH Ponchielli, La Gioconda Everybody at one time or another has heard Ponchielli's famous ballet music "The Dance of the Hours" from the opera La Gioconda. It made a splendid soundtrack for a humorous scene in Walt Disney's classical music cartoon Fantasia. And who of my generation could forget Alan Sherman's comic song, "Hello muddah, hello faddah..."? Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876) is one of the few really grandiose grand operas of the mid nineteenth century to survive in the international repertoire into the twentieth century. The opera has long been in the repertoire in Italy. It has been revived from time to time in some of the world's great opera houses, and it's been well recorded. There are four LP recordings of it in our WWUH classical music record library. I chose the oldest one for broadcast way back on Sunday, September 3, 1989. It was recorded in early stereo sound in 1960 at La Scala and is of historic interest at the very least because that Diva of Divas Maria Callas was the starring soprano. La Gioconda tells a tragic tale of marital infidelity and political intrigue in Venice in the days when the Doges ruled like dictators over a great maritime empire. La Gioconda was Ponchielli's one claim to international operatic fame, although he wrote plenty of other operas. Rather than rebroadcast the Callas Gioconda, I turn from those vintage EMI/Angel LP's to another boxed set of RCA Victor Red Seal vinyl discs, released in 1965, which features the cast of the Metropolitan Opera, with Fernando Previtelli conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome. This was a great era in the history of the Met, and what a lineup of illustrious voices of the past! Soprano Zinka Milanov stars as the ballad singer known as La Gioconda.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 27TH Liebermann, The Picture of Dorian Gray The opera for Halloweentide this year is a close adaptation for the lyric stage of the 1891 novel by Oscar Wilde. Dorian Gray is the first of two operas by American composer and conductor Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961), the other one being Miss Lonelyhearts (2006). Also in the Halloween frame of mind is his music for a ballet Frankenstein (2015), co-produced by the Royal Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet. Lowell Liebermann's The Picture of Dorian Gray premiered at Monte Carlo Opera in 1996. The American premiere came in 1999 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it was produced by Florentine Opera. Steuart Bedford, who directed the Monte Carlo premiere, now leads the singers of the Florentine Opera Company and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. That Milwaukee production was recorded and is currently available to the public online courtesy of the House of Opera dotcom. Thanks to Rob Meehan, former classics deejay here at WWUH and a specialist record collector in the alternative musical stylings of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, for loaning to me for broadcast his download from the House of Opera website onto two compact discs. He also loaned me his bridge CD recording of Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock