David McFerrin in Opera and Song

Opera Boston does Berlioz with David McFerrin

We've followed the career of David McFerrin from Boston to Seattle to Germany and now back to Boston. The Massachusetts native returns to his home turf this week to perform Claudio in Berlioz's "Beatrice et Benedict" with Opera Boston. The opera will be performed on October 21, 23 and 25 at the Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston. The production will be updated from the 16th century to Sicily of the 1950s.

David McFerrin Adds His Voice to the Five Borough Festival

Second chances don't come along often, so if you missed the first performance of the Five Borough Songbook, you'll want to grab their follow up show in Queens at at the Flushing Town Hall on November 12. If you can't make it out to Queens, there are performance left in the remaining three boroughs. as the Songbook comes to Manhattan on January 12, the Bronx in May 2012 and finally to Staten Island in June 2012.

David McFerrin, who relishes singing song recitals, is reason enough to spend an afternoon in Queens. He will be singing Glen Roven's "F from DUMBO," John Glover's "8:46 AM, Five Years Later," their new 20th song, Martin Hennessy's "The City's Love," as well as Ricky Ian Gordon's duet "O City of Ships."

The Songbook, a collection of 20 brand new songs by 20 unique composers, celebrates New York City through its history, poetry, and geography – and its most promising musical talent. Composers who wrotes works for the Five Borough Songbook include Glen Roven, Daron Hagen, Renée Favand-See,  John Glover,  Ricky Ian Gordon,  Yotam Haber,  Martin Hennessy,  Gabriel Kahane,  Gilda Lyons,  Jorge Martín,  Russell Platt,  Matt Schickele,  Richard Pearson Thomas,  Christopher Tignor,  Scott Wheeler  and Mohammed Fairouz.

Visit the Five Borough Songbook website for additional cast and performance information.

For those of you in Texas, McFerrin will be joining the San Antonio Symphony for Handel's Messiah on December 2 & 4. Visit their website for additional information. 

Here is David McFerrin singing Libby Larsen's "Before Loving You:"



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The Great Hector Berlioz

René Pape, Robert Massard and Ettore Bastianini

We've received a few emails about composers who were left off of our Greatest French composers list. Some that we missed were defensible (Lalo and Meyerbeer), but probably not Hector Berlioz, who was one of the titans of French music and historically significant in a number of ways. It only seems fair to highlight some of his music, although much of the great vocal music, outside of "The Damnation of Faust," is for voices other than baritone and bass.  We did find a few selections that we thought you'd enjoy.

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians.[2] He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others.

His operas include Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens, Béatrice et Bénédict and The Damnation of Faust.

Robert Massard sings "Ah, qui pourrait me resister?" from Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini":



Ettore Bastianini singing the Italian version of "The Damnation of Faust" from 1964:



René Pape sings "Voici des roses" from "The Damnation of Faust"