MET "Live in HD": Spectacular new production of stunning new opera

I am moving this blog to my new website, so this will be one of the last posts here.

I returned yesterday from a visit to my alma mater for an excellently performed double-bill of Ravel and Puccini, followed by another visit to the MET for the premiere production of the most compelling operatic score of the 21st century, Kaaija Ssariaho's L'amour de Loin. Check out the MET website, which is a great resource for opera lovers in general, in addition to their current repertoire.

After a couple days reflection, I will say this production is the best new production I've seen at the MET in at least 10 years, and must rank as one of the most important new productions the MET has done in its history. Besides being only the 2nd opera composed by a woman to appear at the MET (the other was by Ethyl Smyth, in 1903), it featured the conducting debut of only the 4th woman to appear in the MET pit, the Finnish dynamo and contemporary specialist, Susanna Mälkki. The musical performance was supreme. This score is atmospheric and dense with layers of sound that envelop the listener like mists, or enchant one like the lull and depth of the sea. I find her one of the most compelling voices in contemporary music today, and one of the most important composers to emerge in the century-plus-long history of modernism. It's time more people listened to creative women. Their voices, like Saariaho's and Mälkki's are vital and distinct.

The cast consists of a trio of great all-star American opera singers. Eric Owens plays the historical troubadour Rudel, in love with an historical Countess of Tripoli, astonishingly sung by Susannah Phillips. The "love from afar" is mediated by an original character sung by the young mezzo, Tamara Mumford. She is an androgynous pilgrim who floats back and forth between the lovers across a light-show sea. The set is hypnotically represented by 28,000 LED lights strung across the stage and pit, spectacularly rendered by Robert Lepage and his Quebec team. For anyone disappointed or unimpressed with the controversial Ring cycle he mounted several years ago, this is a production that finally captures the magic of his Cirque de Soleil successes. If you see no other new production this season, see this one. Click here for tickets. As a colleague, and former OR Apprentice Artist I randomly saw at the performance said to me, "The Met should do more productions like that."

Tokyo Songs - 30/30 Poetry Project

Happy Holidays, Friends:
If you are new to my involvement in Tupelo Press's 30/30 Project, click here to learn more about
this "poetry marathon" I've embarked upon to write 30 poems in 30 days (published daily on Tupelo's site) and help raise funds to support a fellow non-profit organization.

I'll be writing about my recent travels to Tokyo and Venice, and interweaving themes connecting one of my favorite composers, Benjamin Britten (who took frequent composing sabbaticals in Venice, and drew profound inspiration from Japanese Theatre). If my courage and pen do not fail me, I will also share some new poems about my mother, whose first Yahrzeit we recently honored (and whose generosity made my Venetian sabbatical possible).

Below, with notes and accompanying photos, is my poem for December 3. I took the pictures while on a recent concert tour of Japan, sponsored by our fabulous friends at Appalachian Dream.

Below the poems and photos are a couple of notes about references within the last series of haiku and tanka.

Lastly, I'll be moving my blog to my new website soon. Check out scottmwilliamson.com for more music, poetry, art, and whatever aesthetic miscellany I may be up to.

Edo Songs

Uprooted stump curled
like a dragon’s neck staring
down Fuji’s fierce slope
__

Dragonfly sentries
of the Japanese garden
Spirit animals

like the giant black
Butterfly watching the five-
story Pagoda

[Your Fairy Queen soul
would summon them to your side
keeping this world safe]
__

Sumida-gawa*
quietly rippling under
Edo’s brilliant sun

Sumida-gawa
carrier of tales and dreams
tell me a secret

Sumida-gawa
whispering Ugetsu’s loves
will she return here

Sumida-gawa
singing the madwoman’s song
O Curlew River
reveal your dragon’s-tooth roots
admit me into your depths
__

N.B.:

[The verse in brackets was included in earlier series of these haiku.]

*Sumida is one of Tokyo’s most important rivers (gawa). It is the name of a famous Noh play on which Benjamin Britten based his operatic “parable,” Curlew River,
a work he composed in 1964 while on sabbatical in Venice.

The title role (like all female roles in traditional Japanese theatre, and Britten’s first parable) is played in drag. Britten’s partner, Peter Pears, created the leading role of the “madwoman.” Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice, was the crowning role of Pears’ career, and marked the tenor’s belated Metropolitan Opera debut (at 64).

Ugestu is a 1953 film by Kenji Mizoguchi.

30/30 Project: Poem for Day 1

If you haven't heard about my participating in Tupelo Press's "30/30 Project" where I'll write 30 poems in 30 days this month, click here.

Here is the poem for that first day, followed by a brief note on it. Thanks for reading.

Venetian nocturne

Sitting alone on
the Fondamente Nuove
smoking staring out

Looking up at me
as I stroll along the quay
wishing after stars

She’s solitary
and furtive as a night-bird
will she fly away
__

Scott Williamson
(Venice - Roanoke; July - Nov 2016).

This series of haiku was inspired by a night time stroll I regularly took while in residence in the Cannaregio neighborhood (sestiere) of Venice. I was there for a month this past July - August, renting a fabulous Air BnB apartment after the settling of part of my mom's estate. I had long wanted to take a mini-sabbatical and work on artistic projects. One of my goals this trip was to retrace the footsteps of beloved artists and composers from Monteverdi to Bernstein, and in particular, to follow the itinerary of Benjamin Britten.

(View of the moon over the Venetian lagoon, from "I Felzi" apartment)

My apartment was a 90-second walk to the main thoroughfare (both pedestrian and marine) of the area, the Fundamente Nuove. Most Venetian arrivals and departures stop there; it affords views of the mysterious cemetery island, San Michele (where Stravinsky is buried), in addition to popular outlying islands like Murano (the "mecca" of glass-blowing). The Venetian hospital (the Ospedale) is the next stop over, and so while Venice is a relatively crime-free city, what few sirens there are (and they're all attached to the only motorized vehicle in the city: the boat) happen to be in this neighborhood. And yet how quiet the nights are! It was one such night where I saw the woman described in this poem.

The last line of an earlier version read "should I have said hi", and was entitled "Donna tristessa".

New website and 30/30 Project

Dear Friends of Opera Roanoke:

Check out my personal blog here for a link to my new website, and info on an exciting new poetry project with Tupelo Press!

Some Enchanted Collaboration: Rodgers & Hammerstein & South Pacific

Their fourth original collaboration, following Oklahoma, Carousel, and Allegro, South Pacific was the first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on a contemporary story. Prefiguring later successes like The King and I and Flower Drum Song, it was their first show to deal with the “exotic,” and the “culture clash” between east and west. James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tales of the South Pacific (1947) appeared while World War II was fresh in the country’s consciousness. Tales reads more like a succession of linked short stories than a through-composed narrative. The chapter which first caught the song-writing duo’s attention was the central story, “Fo’ Dolla’”, about the Tonkinese mother and daughter pair of Bloody Mary and Liat, focusing on the latter’s love affair with the young Marine Lieutenant, Joe Cable. Not insignificantly, R & H found this story too closely related to Madama Butterfly, and decided one of the supporting tales “had to be the main story.” “Our Heroine” depicts the relationship of Ensign Nellie Forbush and the French plantation owner, Emile De Becque. R & H retained the love story of Liat and Cable, which allowed for parallel resonances in the libretto and the score. Another brilliant dramatic move was including the buffo character, Luther Billis (who appears in separate stories from those aforementioned) to pair with Bloody Mary.

In the heyday of the “integrated” or “book” musical – where, like its progenitor, opera, the elements of narrative, lyrics, music, staging and scenery are unified to form a “total work of art” – South Pacific was hailed upon its opening “as one of the finest musical plays in the history of American theatre.” Hallmarks of the Rodgers and Hammerstein style are apparent from the striking opening scene, which features no fewer than four memorable numbers: “Dites-moi,” “A Cockeyed Optimist,” “Twin Soliloquies” and “Some Enchanted Evening.” The lengthy first act is followed by a swiftly-moving closing act, which favors aptly placed reprises of themes over new material. As in the greatest operas, the contributions of Hammerstein and his co-author, Joshua Logan (also the show’s director) are overshadowed by the beauty and efficacy of the composer’s music. Hammerstein himself bowed to his younger colleague's gifts, astutely observing that Rodgers “writes music to depict story and character and is, therefore, himself a dramatist.” In a 1960 article for Opera News magazine, Rodgers wrote about the integrated musicals of his day and made the case that they should be considered “American Operas.” The casting of the Metropolitan Opera basso, Ezio Pinza as De Becque supports this claim. The greatest evidence, however, is found in the scores of Rodgers and his colleagues like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, and Leonard Bernstein. These “Broadway Operas” feature a signature marriage of European operatic idioms with a distinctly American musical style. That these “golden age” musicals are now the purview of regional opera companies as much as they are a part of the theatre repertoire is a tribute to their staying power, and the creative genius which brought them to life.

South Pacific came to life on Broadway, April 7, 1949, and ran for over five years and 1,925 performances. It was only the second musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. With its frank depiction of racial and cultural issues within a contemporary setting, it was ahead of its time. While audiences today may wince at the apparent “political incorrectness” of its language – “there is nothing like a dame” and “help us lick the Japs” stand out – Rodgers’ biographer, Geoffrey Block, leaves the analytical ivory tower of academia to make a cogent point at the conclusion of his comprehensive essay, “World War II, The Musical”:

Musical comedies depict life, not necessarily as it is, but as we wish it. The more we see ourselves, or prefer to see ourselves, as having grown beyond the prejudices, sexism, materialism, or the dramatic or musical style of a previous era, the more difficult it may be to accept that a work, frozen in time, actually seizes a moment and reflects that moment honestly. As we become further removed from a show’s time and place, a musical that captures its moment can become a slave to that moment, despite its universality.

While “Some Enchanted Evening” may be the romantic heart of this beloved musical, “You’ve got to be carefully taught” is it’s soul.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, / Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate - / You’ve got to be carefully taught!

As Cable confronts the dissonance of his own prejudice, he holds up the mirror of art to illuminate universal issues which show no signs of aging into obsolescence. To be sure, South Pacific is a musical comedy. But this poignant drama of love, lost and regained - with all its inherent human virtues and failings - make it much more than the sum of its many entertaining parts.

Verdi's "poor sinner" returns: Opera Roanoke presents La Traviata

I had the pleasure of talking about our production of La Traviata early today on the WDBJ7 Mornin' Show with Neesey Payne. Here's a link to the first of our three segments.

Last weekend, our friend at the Roanoke Times, Mike Allen wrote this feature about our production, and the personal story behind it.

If you're interested in reading more about my thoughts on the opera and our production, here are the program notes from our upcoming playbill.

…that poor sinner: Verdi’s La Traviata

In more than one letter to colleagues following its infamous 1853 premiere at Venice’s La Fenice, Verdi wrote: “La Traviata was a fiasco. Was it my fault or the singers? Time alone will tell.” Time indeed did tell, upon a new Venetian production at the San Benedetto theater in 1854. Verdi wrote, “Then it was a fiasco; now it has created a furore.” La Traviata capped one of the most remarkable 18-month periods in operatic history, following on the heels of the successful premieres of both Rigoletto and Il Trovatore.

La Traviata is based on the novel-cum-memoir by Alexander Dumas fils, La Dame aux camélias (The Lady of the Camellias, often called "Camille" in English). The son of the more famous author of The Count of Montecristo, Dumas fils was one of several prominent artists – others included Théophile Gautier and Franz Liszt – Marie Duplessis counted as lovers. “The Real Traviata” (to borrow the title of a new biography about Duplessis) was transformed from a poor peasant girl who endured the tragically common abuse of being prostituted by her father into “the queen of Parisian courtesans.” She learned to play the piano, became a connoisseur of opera, and collected a library which included the great authors of Europe. She died from consumption in 1847, two weeks after her 23rd birthday. Her grave in Montmartre quickly became a site of pilgrimage.

Dumas’ story owes much to an earlier French romance of a “fallen woman,” the Abbé Prevost’s famous Manon Lescaut, itself the inspiration for operas by Massenet and Puccini. Verdi found the tale of the famous courtesan and her tempestuous affair with a young artist compelling, “a subject for our time,” and entitled his original version Amore e morte (Love and Death). The story of the love affair, considered “bold and contemporary” for its frankness, and the tragedy of the heroine’s early death have the makings of myth. The “intensely human and yet heroic” title character elicited some of the greatest music for the stage by one of the genre’s giants. Verdi’s humanism, his identification with heroic and independent outsiders and rebels is everywhere apparent in his musical portrait of Violetta. An excerpt from a letter to a hopeful producer from Naples following its disastrous premiere unites these concerns:
So you like my Traviata? That poor sinner who was so unfortunate in Venice. One day I’m going to make the world do her honor. But not in Naples, where your priests would be terrified of seeing on the stage the things they do at night in the quiet.

Our new production attempts to do her honor by heeding Verdi’s wishes that Traviata be performed in a contemporary setting. The Venetian censors insisted on the title change of the opera, and out of deference to them, the producers – against Verdi’s protestations – insisted on a 17th century “period” setting, replete with powdered wigs and aristocratic costumes. This tradition continued in Italy well into the 20th century. While not setting our Traviata in the present day, we believe moving it to the art deco- and Coco Chanel-inspired world of the 1920’s & 30’s brings Verdi’s drama into even sharper focus, while maintaining a true sense of style and historicity. Regardless of its setting, Verdi’s music insures La Traviata will live as long as we human beings continue to find in musical theatre the heightened experience of emotion, vicarious feelings of passion, and that catharsis which is a sui generis virtue of grand opera.

Following the success of La Traviata, Dumas fils would write about the resting place of his “Lady of the Camellias”, in a later version of his book: “That grave now has its legend. Art is divine: it creates and it resurrects.”

Fall Opera Season is Full of Action!

Our 40th Anniversary season really takes off this October, and this coming weekend alone is packed with operatic action. Saturday, October 17th, Virginia Western Community College hosts the Met "Live in HD" broadcast of Verdi's great Otello. Click here to see a clip from the Met's acclaimed new production. The curtain goes up at 12:55, but come to the Whitman Auditorium at 12:30 for my "opera insights" introduction to Otello, the new production, the Met HD season AND Opera Roanoke's "Ruby" Anniversary.

After catching the first act of Otello, I'll be dashing over to the Taubman Museum of Art for the first of this season's "Listening to Paintings" programs, where I pair music and poetry with some of the art on exhibit in the Taubman's galleries.


We're in the middle of Sweeney Todd rehearsals for our super cool new production.

Our new production of Sweeney Todd originated at Theatre Zone in Naples, FL. Our long-time lighting designer, Tlaloc Lopez-Watermann told me about this production and its director, Mark Danni. The concept of having a minimalist set and creatively using a few props immediately appealed to me. The main prop is a coffin, which first appears in the guise of a boat, carrying Sweeney Todd and Anthony up the Thames to London. It also serves as the Judge's podium, as Mrs Lovett's kitchen table, and Sweeney's platform. The production is further stylized by the elimination of mimed deaths, fake blood, etc. One of our ensemble members will act as an "angel of death" and appear with a red scarf to give to each of Todd's victims. I wanted to further stylize this production by having Tlaloc create projections which will appear on the upstage wall of the set, adding atmosphere to what is already a moody show. The "goth / steam-punk" look Mark has chosen for the costumes and make-up is a great fit for the pared-down production. The look will also "read" very well for our Halloween weekend performances of Sondheim's great "musical thriller." I couldn't be more excited about bringing this production to our audiences. In addition to being a little spooked, I know they'll be entertained and ultimately moved by the tragic tale and its effect on Sondheim's characters.

The Progress of the Rake - Stravinsky triumphs at the MET

4.V.15 | NYC – Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress at the Met
Levine: Appleby, Claire, Finley, Blythe, Sherratt, Lattimore, Stevenson, Corona

Monday night's performance of The Rake’s Progress may well have been the best the 65-year-old work has ever had. Having heard both incarnations of the Met’s previous outings (which account for the majority of the opera’s two-dozen some performances there), this surpassed its predecessors musically and dramatically at every turn. The two male principals, Rakewell and Shadow in particular, were as perfect a pair of singing actors as you could wish for the title character and his Mephistophelian foil. Paul Appleby and Gerald Finley defined their roles and set a new standard in the process. Layla Claire was a beautiful Anne: I have never been so moved to tears by this opera I count among my favorites; its emotional depths were plumbed with gorgeous tone and affecting color in each of her scenes. Stephanie Blythe, who sang Baba in the Met’s most recent remount in 2003 was even better, like a super Tuscan that’s deepened without mellowing but has, instead, sharpened its focus. Maggie Lattimore made one wish Mother Goose had more to her cameo appearance; she earned her droigte de Madame in her pivotal scene as Nick’s accomplice. When do you leave this opera wishing Father Trulove had an aria? I know I'm not the only one who wants to hear more of Brindley Sherratt "this side the pond."

If the work has had a finer chorus and auctioneer than the Met and Tony Stevenson, I’d be dumbfounded to hear them. The chorus – is there a better opera chorus in the world these days? – under Donald Polumbo has made considerable gains where details of tone color, articulation, and balance are concerned, without losing any of the visceral force for which it is known. It takes a sophisticated and versatile technique, and an incomparable level of professionalism to accomplish what these musicians do from day to day, throughout the 40-some weeks of the Met’s season. In this, they are equaled only by the Met orchestra, which under James Levine, has become not only the best opera orchestra on the planet, but one of the great orchestras, period. And Maestro Levine was in top form last night. Sitting with my BFF, Steven White, Levine’s assistant conductor for this show, I was aware of the pivotal role he played in preparing for this run, leading staging rehearsals, and jumping into orchestra rehearsals as needed. Having sung under Maestro Levine (in the Verbier festival chorus), it was not hard to imagine the details clarified during the orchestra in the 3 reads they had prior to last Friday’s opening night (this was the 2nd or 3 performances this season). The emotional depth surrounding Anne’s music owed as much to the orchestra and its conductor as to its exceptional young soprano. I’ve never heard Stravinsky’s opera, nor a comparable 20th century companion, played with such range of color. The performance was fleet and incisive, had weight and depth of texture and timbre, but never lacked a chamber music transparency when necessary. Levine let the score breathe in between episodes of great dramatic impetus and momentum. One heard its connection to not only 18th-century baroque and classical models, but also to the grandeur of 19th century tragedy. It was elegant without ever being pompous, moving but never maudlin.

(One of William Hogarth's "Rake's" engravings; the musician to the left is thought to be a caricature of Handel)

In addition to appreciating the details of the score and simply enjoying the vocal excellence on display, the production resonated with me in a way it hadn’t before. To cite one instance, the 3rd and final scene in Act III features the chorus in the asylum with Tom. This choice has obvious musico-dramatic purposes, as it gives “Mad” Tom - who believes he’s Adonis, with Anne as his Venus - a Greek chorus to accompany the haunting, heart-breaking final scene. The Jonathan Miller production uses the same set for Bedlam it had for Mother Goose’s brothel. A central upstage corridor, which served as a hallway leading to several rooms of ill-repute in the Brothel – Mother Goose was leading Tom to one as the curtain came down on it – is now separated from the main room of the stage by prison bars, and the closed-door chambers are solitary confinement cells. By using the entire chorus, Stravinsky and his brilliant librettists, Auden and Kallman have added layers of musical and dramatic depth, while heightening our participation in this morality tale. The entire community is implicated in the wages of sin, otherwise known as the human condition. Like Don Giovanni, one of its primary precursors, the epilogue’s ebullient tone and 4th-wall-breaking function can’t ameliorate the tragedy we’ve experienced, however much its élan may tempt a leavening of the mood.

(Hogarth's "In the Madhouse" - the final image in his series)

To crown this "festival of May," I can’t recall ever experiencing an audience so enthusiastically responsive to a post-WWII-era opera. Bravi tutti! In the meantime, if you don't have tickets to the Saturday matinee, tune in to your local NPR station at 1 pm for the final radio broadcast of the season.
__

The Triumph of Rossini

“So many things must be done right for an opera to turn out well that its amazing any of them succeed at all… Once their [composer's and librettist's] initial job is done, the creation then gets handed over to a whole other set of people who can mess it up… The list of pitfalls goes on… It’s endless, and daunting.” – Wendy Lesser (on opera in The Threepenny Review)

Wendy Lesser's observation on the "daunting" challenges of producing opera are, if I may be so bold to say, being met this month here in Roanoke. And like any overwhelming challenge, success is its own reward. That our audience turnout looks to be the highest since our production of The Pirates of Penzance two seasons ago only heightens our anticipation as we approach opening night.

Here's a preview of the program note I wrote for our production of La Cenerentola (Cinderella) running this weekend.

Never before had music been known to bombard the listener with so rich, so glittering, so spontaneous, so original a succession of new and tantalizing sensations.

Marie-Henri Beyle (better known by his pen-name, Stendhal) wrote his monograph, The Life of Rossini, in 1823, when the composer was at the height of his considerable fame, and it is full of florid accolades like the above epigram. Indeed, the craze for Italian opera across continental Europe was so great that the generation of Bel Canto composers (Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini) entirely over-shadowed efforts by German-language contemporaries as eminent as Beethoven, Weber and Schubert. While Beethoven’s Fidelio (OR, 2008) and Weber’s Die Freischütz hold their own in the repertoire, Schubert’s aspirations were so frustrated he was forced to live vicariously through his Lieder (Art-songs). They include a famous send-up of a bel canto “rage” aria, mocking one of Rossini’s most influential impresarios, Barbaja.

Like Mozart, Rossini possessed an apparently inherent gift for felicitous melody. And like Mozart, Rossini was prodigious from an early age: he completed a dozen opera by his 21st year. (Cenerentola was the 20th of some 40). Yet the comparisons between the two geniuses were not all favorable. One of Rossini’s nicknames, Il Tedeschino (“the Little German”), was derogatively applied to his use of so-called “Germanic” harmony. To be fair, his Mediterranean contemporaries had already criticized Mozart for the same “obstruction” of melody with harmony too “rich and strange” for the stage. Audiences and academics alike have since corrected that misperception over the intervening centuries, as neither Mozart’s nor Rossini’s operas have ever fallen out of favor.

And Rossini’s fame has never been greater than it is today. While Il Barbiere di Siviglia is a perennial “Top Ten” on opera’s most-performed list, Rossini’s other masterworks have been slow to appear on certain stages. The Metropolitan Opera did not present La Cenerentola until 1997 (just two years before OR’s most recent production in 1999). The MET’s premiere production of La Donna del Lago (The Lady of the Lake) joined their repertory just last month; recent seasons have seen highly anticipated and acclaimed MET premieres of Armida and Le Comte Ory.

What accounts for Rossini’s enduring popularity? Along with an unerring sense of melody, Rossini’s gifts as a master of musical theatre include a harmonic language perfectly balanced to his characters and their dramatic situations. Like Mozart, Rossini excels at the musical ensemble – a form original to the operatic stage – and the brilliant deployment of various combinations expertly serve the theatrical pace. Rossini’s knack for form and musical architecture is especially apparent in La Cenerentola. As Stendhal puts it, in one of his colorful bon mots:
he knows how to husband his listener’s attention, shielding it lovingly against the danger of vain distractions, only to hurl it with greater impetus upon the traces of what is really essential.

Rossini’s overtures maintain a special place in the concert repertory of orchestras even outside the opera house, and La Cenerentola’s Sinfonia is an exemplary model. Adumbrating themes we will recognize within the drama, it contains the first of several notable instances of the so-called “Rossini crescendo.” Deceptively simple in appearance, both on the page and to the ear, this device involves a series of repetitions: each phrase builds momentum as it grows in dynamic range from the softest piano to a thrilling fortissimo. Like a force of nature, this irrepressible surge of energy is no less impressive for the predictability of its outcome. Examples abound in the score, with particularly effective episodes in the first act quintet and finale, and the second act sextet. While the vocal fireworks and buffo antics distinguish the individual characters’ solo arias, it is in the ensembles in which Rossini shows himself Mozart’s operatic successor. The duet between Dandini and Don Magnifico near the top of Act 2 is another unerring example of Rossini’s synthesis of musical comedy with dramatic verisimilitude.

What distinguishes Rossini’s Cinderella from the countless variations of the fairy tale is found in its subtitle: La Cenerentola ossia La bontà in trionfa. Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant. Eschewing the supernatural elements of Fairy Godmother, transforming pumpkins, and the like, Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti have given us a masterpiece of humanity, with all its warts, foibles, and enduring virtues. Cinderella does not need to be “the fairest of them all,” because she has goodness in abundance. She sings her acts of mercy, and like a benevolent diva, maintains a spirit of humility. Through Rossini’s incomparable dramma giocoso, this “once upon a time / in a land far-away” story comes to life for us like no other version of the immortal tale can: through the power of its music.

Mozart's Abduction: Program Notes

The most famous quotation attached to Mozart’s first opera for Vienna, allegedly from Emperor Joseph himself, “Far too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and far too many notes,” glosses over the fact this musical comedy was both instantly popular and remarkably inventive. Like its five great siblings, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan Tutte, The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito, The Abduction from the Seraglio works within its particular genre while expanding its range and astonishing us with the variety of its forms. The two German operas Mozart wrote for Vienna, Abduction and Magic Flute, were each a Singspiel (literally “Singing play,” but better translated as “musical comedy”), intended for audiences of not just the court and aristocracy, but the military, the professional, and middles classes. Mozart’s Abduction was a hit from its opening night in the sweltering summer of 1782. By the time of the composer’s death less than a decade later, it had been performed in over 30 European cities. More than any of his previous works, it established Mozart as one of the leading composers of the era. Critics were so taken with Mozart’s musico-dramatic genius they gushed effusively, as his first biographer, Niemetschek observed:

"it was as if what had hitherto been taken for music was nothing of the kind. Everyone was enchanted, amazed at the novel harmonies, the new, unprecedented way the wind instruments were treated."

Indeed, given our über-familiarity with Mozart’s style, his seemingly effortless grace and élan, the propulsive energy and vivacity of his music, it is helpful to be reminded just how novel this music was in the last decades of the 18th century. Building on the orchestral richness of his previous opera, Idomeneo, Mozart composed an unprecedented range of instrumental color into his score. This is most obvious from the “Turkish” music introduced right from the start of the overture. “I doubt if anyone could fall asleep during it, even if he hadn’t slept a wink the night before,” Mozart wrote. The “exotic” qualities of the music, en vogue across Europe at the time, are evoked by the augmented percussion section, the bright upper register of the piccolo, and the use of the Lydian scale (which has a raised 4th step: F-sharp in C major). Mozart’s genius is to integrate these elements into the score to serve the drama. Here are the 26-year old composer’s observations on one of the arias for the oafish bass:

"Osmin’s rage is made comic, as the Turkish music is brought in…and as his rage increases, just when you think the aria is ending – comes the Allegro assai [very fast],in a completely different tempo and key…For just as a man in such a towering rage oversteps all order, moderation and restraint and completely forgets himself, so the music must forget itself."

Belmonte’s aria, “O wie Ängstlich” [O how anxious], uses the orchestra to equal, albeit distinct, dramatic effect. Here the tenor’s “beating heart, full of love, is depicted by the violins in octaves.” That Mozart would, against his Father’s wishes, marry Constanze Weber in between performances of this opera whose heroine shares the namesake of his beloved is another example of art imitating life.

We have chosen to place our production in a “timeless modern” setting, and have updated the dialogue accordingly. The central theme which courses through Mozart’s incomparable musical dramas is the range and depth of the human heart. Whether set in a Turkish harem or a nameless American mansion, Mozart’s music lives through his characters. However they compare to the “types” we expect on the operatic stage – Romantic hero (tenor), tragic heroine or soubrette (soprano) – Mozart’s creations transcend their individual roles and speak to us through the universal language of human experience. This is but one of the reasons why his operas, more than 200 years on, are as popular and enduring as ever.

"Elegance and Romance from Virginia" tour of Japan

Amy and I just returned from a fabulous week in Japan, where we performed
with our good friends and colleagues, pianist Judy Clark, and the "Clasic Strings Duo"
of brothers Kevin and Bryan Matheson (violin and viola, respectively).

Here are some pictures from our rehearsals in Yamaha Hall - an acoustically
vibrant space we all found to be one of the nicest concert halls in which
we've performed.

Before our concert at Yamaha, we performed for appreciate guests at the Hotel Chinzan-so Tokyo. Performing for three nights in "Il Teatro" gave new meaning to "singing for your supper!" Our generous sponsor and patron (not to mention translator and guide extraordinaire!), Tomoko Gillespie, is between Judy and Amy below:



We performed a varied program of favorite operatic and musical theatre arias and duets from La Bohéme, Tosca, La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, The King and I, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and among others, Brigadoon. We didn't know how well we'd be received by an audience we'd been told might be more reserved, less demonstrative and less familiar with opera than what we've come to expect. We prepared one encore, performed two, and could have offered a third! Here we are with the emcee of our concert, a Japanese soprano who translated for the audience.

Not only was mini-Beethoven-san a hit, but the Matheson brothers were swarmed by young violinists who wanted their music autographed!

Following the Yamaha Hall Recital on November 5, we sang another program at Christ Church in Yokohama. The expat and local community was again demonstratively supportive, and we were grateful and proud to represent our community in another vibrant center of the Land of the Rising Sun. We had one day off before our return yesterday (Nov 8), and we visited the fabled city of shrines, Kyoto.

Newsflash from the Onion: MET cancels Macbeth broadcast for promoting regicide!

If you haven't heard of the Onion, it's a satirical broadside which lampoons just about everything. To my knowledge, no one has cancelled Shakespeare opera productions recently for politically correct reasons, but...

You may have heard about the latest operatic drama to occur off-stage, this time from Australia:

Musical America posted the following among its weekly headlines:

CANBERRA, Australia -- The West Australian Opera has dropped Carmen from its scheduled 2015 run because the 140-year-old French opera depicts smoking.

It was actually General Manager Carolyn Chard's idea, a courtesy to Healthway, a health promo agency and an opera company sponsor. On consulting Healthway if they liked the idea, the agency responded, "fine."

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday condemned the deal as "political correctness gone crazy."

Opera is "an exaggeration and if we are running around looking to take offence or looking to spread some politically correct message, just about every opera would be forbidden," Abbott told Melbourne Radio 3AW.

"We don't stop the theater from running Macbeth because it promotes killing kings."

Though the MET has had its share of off-stage drama leading up to its 2014-2015 season, canceling its "Live in HD" broadcast of Verdi's Macbeth is not one of them. In fact, the new HD season kicks off tomorrow with the acclaimed production starring the MET's prima donna, Anna Netrebko (above) in her role debut as Lady Macbeth. You can watch a clip here.

Better yet, join me tomorrow at Va Western Community College 1/2 hour before the 12:55 curtain for a preview of the new production, the new season, Opera Roanoke's season and our imminent world premiere of a new children's opera, The Three Feathers, written for the Va Tech Moss Center for the Arts, by composer Lori Laitman, poet Dana Gioia. It's directed by Beth Greenberg and conducted by yours truly.


Hope to see you at the opera!

"Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone...

[Musical theatre sing-along]: …a Comedy To-night!" OR fans may encounter Sondheim's tag from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum NOT because we are programming his first musical comedy hit, but for the other musical comedies on the horizon.

This Saturday, May 10, the MET "Live in HD" season concludes with Rossini's sparkling version of the Cinderella story, La Cenerentola (click here to see more info and a preview video of superstar Kansan and mezzo extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato).

While I will not be able to attend our screening at Virginia Western Community College (tickets and info here), members of the OR team will be on hand to share info about our 2014-15 season, which - funnily enough - features "Comedy Tonight" as one of its tag lines. We'll end our 39th season next Spring with a new production of Rossini's Cenerentola, our first-ever in the Jefferson Center.

Next week, I have the pleasure of making my local professional directorial debut at W&L, May 13 & 15. I've been working with colleagues and music students on Offenbach's spoof of the famous European salons and soirees, Mr Choufleuri restera chez lui (which we're doing in English as "Mr Cauliflower Will Be at Home for Dinner"). More info is on our homepage. We are having a blast!

If opera fans only know Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, then his zanier one-acts (he wrote some 90 operettas!) may come as refreshing palette cleansers. "Mr Choufleuri" provides a glimpse into why Offenbach not only helped launch the genre known as Viennese operetta, but influenced Gilbert & Sullivan, and musical comedy in English to this day. Rossini called him "Mozart of the Champs-Elysées," and Nietzsche credited him with the "supreme form" of operatic "wit." One could do far worse...

IN UNIS: FOR MODERNS | L2P @ TMA | 3.IV.12 | 20.30 hours

I'll decrypt the title in a sec: Listening to Paintings
at the Taubman Museum of Art, April 3, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

I will be sharing my seasonal presentation, L2P, blending the visual arts with music and poetry Thursday night at the Taubman, and its FREE, as part of their hip "Thursday Night Live" Series. When asked to describe "what is it?" I usually reply with a boring-sounding description like: "multi-disciplinary, lecture-recital, poetry reading, &/or gallery tour…" Does that help?

But we always have fun, and stimulating questions or comments are always part of the relaxed but seriously artful hour.

(Below, "Mask," by Martin Johnson)

I'll be focusing on a mere two of the 1/2 dozen cool galleries recently (re-) opened: Martin Johnson's mesmerizing show of genre-bending work (curated by our friend, Ray Kass), and the stunning show of from the VA Museum of Fine Arts, European Masters. The latter exhibit starts with Ingres & Delacroix, then proceeds like a "who's-who" of twentieth-century art, an art-history crash-course in one room.

Review of Giulio Cesare by Timothy Gaylard (RSO critic for the RT)

For those of you don't know, Tim and I are old friends - I taught with him at W & L when I first came to the region in 1996 - and since he has also been employed by OR (Steven asked Tim, Amy & I to do a Shakespeare recital for an awesome all-Shakespeare season in 2008-2009, I believe) - Tim is not allowed to review the opera for the Roanoke Times. This should explain the irony of the one character for whom he reserves criticism. Hint: this character was not onstage until the opera was over… I love it!

Let's hope they'll at least print it as a letter to the editor…

(Wes Mason, as Achilla with Teresa Buchholz, in the title role)

Julius Caesar at Opera Roanoke by Timothy Gaylard

The many moods of Handel’s Julius Caesar by Opera Roanoke were on display Friday night because of a talented singing cast and a responsive orchestra. This Baroque opera seria is a challenge because of its length, its difficult vocal writing, its convoluted plot and its requirement of elaborate visual effects. On all these counts, the company delivered a winning rendition, sparking an appreciative standing ovation at the end of the evening.

Of the many standout vocal performances, the title role of Caesar, played by mezzo soprano Teresa Buchholz, was particularly impressive because of a warm tone, a flexible technique and a charismatic stage presence. She was partnered well by Amy Cofield Williamson as Cleopatra, who played the famous Queen as a playful and seductive creature with changeable and complex feelings. Cofield Williamson dispatched all her arias with finesse, displaying an incredible vocal range and control, from the sustained beauty of “Piangero” to the fast coloratura of “Da tempeste.”

Carla Dirlikov played the crucial role of Cornelia with great expression and dramatic conviction. When she was joined by Toby Newman as Sesto in the moving duet “Son nato,” the effect was magical. Newman succeeded well in presenting her character as an impetuous and tortured young man. The male singers were equally as impressive. Eric Brenner sang the difficult part of Tolemeo with a colorful counter-tenor voice and he was both amusing and menacing in his characterization. Wes Mason revealed the many shades of his finely-wrought baritone, while the imposing Andrew Potter sang with a firm, but flexible bass.

Of the smaller roles, Angela Theis was especially memorable as Nireno, providing a clear, well-produced sound. Various members of the chorus and cast doubled effectively as soldiers, servants, and supporters. The ensemble for the final chorus was nicely balanced and projected. Scenes of Ancient Egypt, whether in a garden, a throne-room, a bedroom, or a battlefield, were aptly suggested by various re-arrangements of elements within a versatile main set. The steep staircases posed some physical challenges for the cast. Costumes and makeup, especially for Cleopatra, were visually stunning.

In the pit, Scott Williamson got the best out of his orchestral players, from the delicate strings to the seamless winds. The noble sound of Wally Easter’s horn in Caesar’s “Va tacito” was almost perfectly played. Only occasionally did Williamson push the tempi beyond what was comfortable for the singers. Overall, the production made a strong case for the opera’s greatness and the community around Roanoke should feel proud to have such a fine company in its midst.

Timothy Gaylard is Professor of Music at Washington and Lee University

Amy Cofield Williamson (Cleopatra), Teresa Buchholz (Giulio Cesare) and the cast of Opera Roanoke's Julius Caesar

Rome and Egypt collide in Roanoke: Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt, Mar 21 & 23

48 B.C.E. Julius Caesar, bold statesman, brilliant general, political genius, dictator - one of the most remarkable men in history - arrives in Egypt, victorious after Civil War in Italy. He meets Cleopatra, legendary Egyptian Queen, symbol of unsurpassed beauty who, as one of the most famous women ever to have lived, has lodged herself into the collective imagination of the world. Egypt itself is embroiled in Civil War. Intrigue. Manipulations. Liaisons. Handel's operatic masterpiece, Giulio Cesare in Egitto.
- Rod Gomez, director.

Rod's note above and my program notes below are included in our playbill. I hope they whet your appetite for Handel.

George Frideric Handel was as cosmopolitan as he was prodigious. A German composer who cut his teeth in Italy before settling in England to become the greatest opera composer of his time, his name has since been synonymous with the sacred Oratorio, of which Messiah is the most famous. The “Hallelujah Chorus,” however, may not have been written, had Italian opera not had its Handelian heyday in 1720’s London. As director of the Royal Academy, a project initiated by his aristocratic patrons, Handel not only initiated one of the richest periods of musical drama; he also helped birth the concept of the season subscription. As one of his founding patrons put it, “The intention of this musical Society, was to secure themselves a constant supply of Operas to be composed by HANDEL, and performed under his direction.” With “his Majesty pleased to let his name appear at the head of it,” the Society had its “Royal” designation and significant political, if not always financial, capital. Handel invested enough talent and energy “in the enterprise over the next eight years, the Academy, though financially disastrous, was an artistic triumph.” Indeed, as many an Impresario has found in the subsequent three centuries, artistic genius alone does not insure sustainability. (But that is another essay…)

(A 1720 portrait of Senesino)

As we have attempted in our production of Cesare, Handel set about hiring the best talent available for his cast and his orchestra. Among those were the famed castrato, known as Senesino, and the celebrated sopranos Cuzzoni and Faustina. “Opera fever gripped the town,” Handel scholar and conductor Christopher Hogwood writes. Quoting a letter from John Gay to Jonathan Swift, “Senesino is daily voted to be the greatest man who ever lived.” Fitting, then, he should create the role of Handel’s greatest hero, Julius Ceasar, for the 1724 season of the Royal Academy. What makes Giulio Cesare a cut above even the best of Handel’s operas is the quality of the score. Not until Mozart would an opera have such depth of character in its vocal writing, nor magnificent color and variety in its orchestration. For Cleopatra’s great “seduction scene” of Caesar [at the top of Act II in the original; in our abridged production, near the end of Act I], Handel calls for a double orchestra and writes a nine-voice accompaniment, one instrument each representing the nine Muses. Critics ascribe an “exotic magnificence” and “spacious sensuality” to this scene in particular, and the entire opera.

If this were an opera with a compelling central couple and mere two-dimensional supporting roles, it might fare no better than a Hollywood flop. While I count myself among the fans of Joseph Mankiewicz’s spectacular 1962 film, Cleopatra, Achillas is a cipher in that 4-hour epic. One would be hard-pressed to leave this live drama without an opinion about that complex general whose character evolves as much as any in the opera. His cunning boss, Cleopatra’s younger brother, Ptolemy (Tolomeo) is anything but a whining teenager in Handel’s vision. After Caesar and Cleopatra, the grieving widow, Cornelia and her vengeance-hungry son, Sesto command our attention and enlist our support. Their duet of lament is one of the most heart-rending, pathos-filled strains in Western music, more remarkable for its formal simplicity and restraint.

At a recent reading, a renowned poet was asked the familiar question, “why doesn’t modern poetry rhyme?” Are you deaf? There’s music everywhere, you just have to listen, was his frank reply. The same applies to the notion that 18th century opera lacks the passion of its 19th century successors. The pathos, passion and humanity are everywhere in Handel’s penetrating musical drama on the nature of relationships - political, familial, and romantic. And it features one of history’s most glamorous couples, singing like their lives depend on it.

In his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Whitman writes of the "solitary" thrush, "warbling a song."

In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
…
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well dear brother I know)
If thou was not gifted to sing, thou woulds't surely die.

We have a stunning cast of artists who embody this metaphor of the life-and-death relationship the artist commits to with her art. See the drama and hear the music come to life Mar 21 & 23 at the Jefferson Center.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions to all musicians...

Today is St Cecilia's Day. Cecilia is the Patron Saint of Music. November 22 is also the birthday of Benjamin Britten, whom many consider to be the greatest composer not only of English opera, but the greatest the UK has ever produced. Today marks his centenary. Having devoted a significant portion of my studies and career to his life and music, I have been looking forward to this celebration of "Britten 100" for some time. A wonderful introduction to the composer and his beloved home in East Anglia, in the seaside town of Aldeburgh can be found on the Guardian website. The video ends with excerpts from his famous first opera, Peter Grimes, performed on Aldeburgh Beach to mark the centenary.

BBC Radio 3 is also celebrating the occasion with weekend-long broadcasts from Aldeburgh and Snape, where Britten and his partner, the tenor, Peter Pears built a concert hall. Britten 100 is live on the BBC and archived for online listening.

HM, Queen Elizabeth II attended the grand opening of the Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1967. Britten concluded the program with Handel's Ode for St. Cecilia. The text of John Dryden's famous poem is below. Handel's music and Dryden's poem were both so important for composers their influence can be heard in Mozart's The Magic Flute. "The Power of Music" is a recurring theme, transcending boundaries of historical period, culture and style.

Amy and I will be singing in Handel's Ode for St Cecilia at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church this Sunday, November 24, at 4:00 p.m.

Britten's earliest homage to St Cecilia was his brilliant a cappella setting of W. H. Auden's densely textured "Hymn for St Cecilia's Day." It features a memorable refrain which choral conductors have borrowed for program titles for the last 70 years.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions 

To all musicians, appear and inspire: 

Translated Daughter, come down and startle 

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

The full text of Dryden's and Auden's respective poems are below. Insatiable readers should also forbear and read Alexander Pope's Ode, which follows. I particularly love the alliterative list at the end of the 6th section when Eurydice (the widow of Orpheus) is evoked:

Yet ev'n in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.

Pope's 7th and final verse opens with this harmonious quatrain:

Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm:
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please.

Poems for St Cecilia | 22 November

John Dryden (1631-1700): A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day (1687)

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound:
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly, and so well.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangour
Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,
And mortal alarms.
The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries Hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat!

The soft complaining flute,
In dying notes, discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim
Their jealous pangs and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,
Depth of pains, and height of passion,
For the fair, disdainful dame.

But O, what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place,
Sequacious of the lyre;
But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder higher:
When to her organ vocal breath was given,
An angel heard, and straight appear'd
Mistaking Earth for Heaven.

GRAND CHORUS.

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the Blest above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky!
___

W.H. Auden (1907-1973): A Hymn to Saint Cecilia (1940)

In a garden shady this holy lady 

With reverent cadence and subtle psalm, 

Like a black swan as death came on 

Poured forth her song in perfect calm: 

And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin 

Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer, 

And notes tremendous from her great engine 

Thundered out on the Roman air. 

Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited, 

Moved to delight by the melody, 

White as an orchid she rode quite naked 

In an oyster shell on top of the sea; 

At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing 

Came out of their trance into time again, 

And around the wicked in Hell's abysses 

The huge flame flickered and eased their pain. 


Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions 

To all musicians, appear and inspire: 

Translated Daughter, come down and startle 

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

II.
I cannot grow; 

I have no shadow 

To run away from,

I only play. 

I cannot err; 

There is no creature 

Whom I belong to, 

Whom I could wrong. 

I am defeat 

When it knows it 

Can now do nothing 

By suffering. 

All you lived through, 

Dancing because you 

No longer need it 

For any deed. 

I shall never be
Different. Love me. 


Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions 

To all musicians, appear and inspire: 

Translated Daughter, come down and startle 

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

III.
O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall, 

O calm of spaces unafraid of weight, 

Where Sorrow is herself, forgetting all 

The gaucheness of her adolescent state, 

Where Hope within the altogether strange 

From every outworn image is released, 

And Dread born whole and normal like a beast 

Into a world of truths that never change: 

Restore our fallen day; O re-arrange. 

O dear white children casual as birds, 

Playing among the ruined languages, 

So small beside their large confusing words, 

So gay against the greater silences 

Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head, 

Impetuous child with the tremendous brain, 

O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain, 

Lost innocence who wished your lover dead, 

Weep for the lives your wishes never led. 

O cry created as the bow of sin
Is drawn across our trembling violin. 

O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain. 

O law drummed out by hearts against the still 

Long winter of our intellectual will. 

That what has been may never be again. 

O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath 

Of convalescents on the shores of death. 

O bless the freedom that you never chose.

O trumpets that unguarded children blow 

About the fortress of their inner foe. 

O wear your tribulation like a rose. 


Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions 

To all musicians, appear and inspire: 

Translated Daughter, come down and startle 

Composing mortals with immortal fire.
___

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Ode on St. Cecilia's Day
I. Descend ye Nine! descend and sing;
The breathing instruments inspire,
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly-pleasing strain
Let the warbling lute complain:
Let the loud trumpet sound,
'Till the roofs all around
The shrill echo's rebound:
While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers, soft and clear,
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder, and yet louder rise,
And fill with spreading sounds the skies;
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats;
'Till, by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,
And melt away,
In a dying, dying fall.

II. By Music, minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft, assuasive voice applies;
Or when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening airs.
Warriors she fires with animated sounds;
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds:
Melancholy lifts her head,
Morpheus rouzes from his bed,
Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,
List'ning Envy drops her snakes;
Intestine war no more our Passions wage,
And giddy Factions hear away their rage.

III. But when our Country's cause provokes to Arms,
How martial music ev'ry bosom warms!
So when the first bold vessel dar'd the seas,
High on the stern the Thracian rais'd his strain,
While Argo saw her kindred trees
Descend from Pelion to the main.
Transported demi-gods stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound,
Enflam'd with glory's charms:
Each chief his sev'nfold shield display'd,
And half unsheath'd the shining blade:
And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound
To arms, to arms, to arms!

IV. But when thro' all th'infernal bounds
Which flaming Phlegeton surrounds,
Love, strong as Death, the Poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appear'd,
O'er all the dreary coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortur'd ghosts!
But hark! he strikes the golden lyre;
And see! the tortur'd ghosts respire,
See, shady forms advance!
Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still,
Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance!
The Furies sink upon their iron beds,
And snakes uncurl'd hang list'ning round their heads.

V. By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow
O'er th' Elysian flow'rs,
By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow meads of Asphodel,
Or Amaranthine bow'rs,
By the hero's armed shades,
Glitt'ring thro' the gloomy glades,
By the youths that dy'd for love,
Wand'ring in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life;
Oh take the husband, or return the wife!
He sung, and hell consented
To hear the Poet's pray'r;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious?
Tho' fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.

VI. But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in Maeanders,
All alone,
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with Furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's snows:
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desart he flies;
Hark! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals cries —
— Ah see, he dies!
Yet ev'n in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.

VII. Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm:
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th'immortal pow'rs incline their ear;
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And Angels lean from heav'n to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let Poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is giv'n;
His numbers rais'd a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heav'n.
___

Art is science, science is art

Collaboration and cooperation are more than buzzwords here in Virginia's Blue Ridge. Among the many colleague organizations with whom we are proud to partner, The Science Museum of Western Virginia is one. Several of our apprentice artists joined Amy and me for their final "Butterflies @ 5" presentation of the season in late September. The following poem was inspired by the few minutes I spent gawking at the moon rock the museum had on display.

At the Science Museum of Western Virginia

This like a dream | Keeps other time, | And daytime is | The loss of this
(from “This Lunar Beauty,” W. H. Auden)

The crystal shivers through
your impossibly old body,
moon-rock, lunar idol,
fascination block on view
here beneath the butterfly
pavilion. I quiver,
circling the pedestal
supporting your extra-
terrestrial mass, which
I expect, any nanosecond
now, to break out, shatter
glass, and streak free
across a room that can’t
possibly cage 33 million millennia.

(September 2013)

No less a scientific genius than Thomas Edison
wrote to the operatic genius, Giacomo Puccini:

"Men die and governments change,
but the melodies of La Boheme will live forever."

(Mark Fisher:
Sounds of an Atlantic Spotted Dolphin)

Opera Review: Musicians Star in the Magic Flute by Timothy Gaylard

Below is a review of Opera Roanoke's October 21st performance of The Magic Flute,
presented by Washington and Lee University.

Musicians star in The Magic Flute by Timothy Gaylard

Opera Roanoke brought a welcome performance of Mozart's beloved The Magic Flute to Lexington last night. The almost sold-out house responded positively to an evening of entertaining theatrical and musical delights. In the overture, the orchestra, comprised of select members of the Roanoke Symphony, demonstrated a cohesive and tight ensemble under the deft direction of Scott Williamson. In particular, the wind section impressed with playing of virtuosic bravura and expressive color. For the rest of the evening, Maestro Williamson and his players provided magnificent support to the vocal cast.

The opera itself featured very talented singers, some of whom were performing their roles for the very first time. At the core of the comedy in this work is the character Papageno, here played by the young baritone Joseph Lim. Not only did he sing beautifully but he endeared himself to the audience with his wit, defiance and petulance. As a serious foil, the role of Tamino was expertly sung by Michael Gallant, whose tenor voice easily negotiated the taxing high tessitura of the part. In the part of his beloved Pamina, soprano Shelly Milam acted with effective pathos and strength and sang with lyrical sweetness. Lindsey Russell, as the Queen of the Night, gamely donned a male costume, but sang with the appropriate force and range, including the famous high Fs, dispatching them with pin-point accuracy. Bass Matthew Curran played the wise Sarastro intelligently, letting his noble humanity shine through and singing the low notes of the role with distinction.

In smaller roles, there were some especial standouts. The Three Ladies, sung by Chelsea Bonagura, Stacy Dove, and Leah Melfi, blended well and vied comically with each other over Tamino in the first scene. Tenor Adam McAllister was suitably scary and menacing in the unsavory part of Monostatos. Andrew Ellis and Andrew Otter were particularly impressive as the Armored Men, intoning powerfully the choral tune in the finale. Keith Reed's baritone was sonorous and weighty in the crucial part of the "Speaker" who leads Tamino on the right path to enlightenment. Anna Sterrett, was amusingly coy as the disguised Papagena and then transformed herself into an energetic and playful Pocahontas look-alike; the "Pa-pa-pa" duet with Papageno revealed a bright and agile soprano voice.

The audience was also treated to the visual delights of animals, birds, a butterfly, and an attractive temple facade, indicating in part at least the historical location of Williamsburg, instead of the traditional setting of ancient Egypt. Members of the chorus did well in convincing us of their American heritage and they sang with a full and effective sound. When the curtain came down, the audience gave the performers a well-deserved standing ovation.

Timothy Gaylard is Professor of Music at Washington and Lee University.

A few of my favorite things about our Flute

A random & subjective list of ten (or so) favorite things about our new production of
The Magic Flute:

The death of the monster by the Three Ladies (Chelsea, Stacy & Leah) & their awesome power.

(Sabrina and Jonah, our Southwest Va Ballet dancers as the dragon, with the 3 divas far right)

Papageno (Joseph), AKA: "Nature Boy" and "Travel Buddy."

Our 3 Spirits (Miranda, Angela & Logan) dressed as Mozart triplets.

The Queen of the Night's (Lindsay's) first aria.

The Speaker (Keith) as Thomas Jefferson, exuding gravitas.

The Queen of the Night's second aria.

The taming of the wild animals with the Magic Flute.

The hypnotizing of the slaves with the magic bells.

Sarastro (Matthew) as George Washington, and his revolutionary low notes.

(Pamina, Shelly Milam, as Sarastro, Matthew Curran, looks on)

Pamina & Tamino (Shelly & Michael) emerging unscathed from the trials of fire and water.

The Papagena - Papageno (Anna & Joseph) duet and chicken dance. Seriously.

(Anna Sterrett, Papagena and the 3 Spirits: Miranda Jones, Angela Lee and Logan Truesdell)