Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Verdi's Macbeth from the Royal Opera House is being broadcast in movie theaters worldwide on Monday, June 13th. Click HERE for performance times in your area. The production uses Verdi’s 1865 revision, especially noted for Lady Macbeth’s great aria ‘La luce langue’ and the wonderful Act IV opening chorus, and brings out the dark motivations of the Macbeths and the light of justice for those they wrong.
Simon Keenlyside and Liudmyla Monastryrska play the Scottish nobleman and his villainously ambitious wife, who spurs her husband to murder for the sake of his career, and American bass-baritone Raymond Aceto takes the role of Banquo, murder victim and symbol of conscience.
The great Cole Porter was born 120 years ago today and we figured he's as worthy of a tribute as yesterday's composer, Robert Schumann. We can't think of a better baritone to celebrate with than Thomas Hampson, who has championed Porter's music and recorded an album of his songs entitled, "Night and Day." Here is what Hampson had to say about Porter in an interview:
Thomas Hampson's "Night and Day"
Robert Hilferty: What’s the distinction between American art song and the songs of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern?
Hampson: These are concert songs, in which a poem is set to music versus a lyric. There is no reason to make a qualitative difference. A song by Samuel Barber is no better than a song by Cole Porter or George Gershwin. They have different thrusts. But what they have together, however, is storytelling.
Cole Porter was an American composer and songwriter. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day," "I Get a Kick out of You," "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He was noted for his sophisticated bawdy lyrics, clever rhymes, and complex forms. He was one of the greatest contributors to the Great American Songbook. Cole Porter is one of the few Tin Pan Alley composers to have written both lyrics and music for his songs.
Just for fun, here is the great John Barrowman performing "Anything Goes," followed by Frank Sinatra singing "I've Got You Under My Skin."
Gérard Souzay is one of our favorite historical hunks, so it seemed fitting that we celebrate the 201st birthday of Robert Schumann with his Dichterliebe. The song cycle, which roughly translates as "The Poet's Love," was written in 1840 and is based on the great poetry of Heinrich Heine. The very natural, almost hyper-sensitive poetical affections of the poems are beautifully mirrored in Schumann's settings, with their miniaturist chromaticism and suspensions. The poet's love is a hothouse of nuanced responses to the delicate language of flowers, dreams and fairy-tales. Schumann adapts the words of the poems to his needs for the songs, sometimes repeating phrases and often rewording a line to supply the desired cadence.
1. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (Heine, Lyrical Intermezzo no 1). (In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my suffering and longing.)
2. Aus meinen Tränen sprießen (Heine no 2). (Many flowers spring up from my tears, and a nightingale choir from my sighs: If you love me, I'll pick them all for you, and the nightingale will sing at your window.)
3. Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne (Heine no 3). (I used to love the rose, lily, dove and sun, joyfully: now I love only the little, the fine, the pure, the One: you yourself are the source of them all.)
4. Wenn ich in deine Augen seh (Heine no 4). (When I look in your eyes all my pain and woe fades: when I kiss your mouth I become whole: when I recline on your breast I am filled with heavenly joy: and when you say, 'I love you', I weep bitterly.)
5. Ich will meine Seele tauchen (Heine no 7). (I want to bathe my soul in the chalice of the lily, and the lily, ringing, will breathe a song of my beloved. The song will tremble and quiver, like the kiss of her mouth which in a wondrous moment she gave me.)
6. Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome (Heine no 11). (In the Rhine, in the sacred stream, great holy Cologne with its great cathedral is reflected. In it there is a face painted on golden leather, which has shone into the confusion of my life. Flowers and cherubs float about Our Lady: the eyes, lips and cheeks are just like those of my beloved.)
7. Ich grolle nicht (Heine no 18). (I do not chide you, though my heart breaks, love ever lost to me! Though you shine in a field of diamonds, no ray falls into your heart's darkness. I have long known it: I saw the night in your heart, I saw the serpent that devours it: I saw, my love, how empty you are.)
8. Und wüßten's die Blumen, die kleinen (Heine no 22). (If the little flowers only knew how deeply my heart is wounded, they would weep with me to heal my suffering, and the nightingales would sing to cheer me, and even the starlets would drop from the sky to speak consolation to me: but they can't know, for only One knows, and it is she that has torn my heart asunder.) 9. Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen (Heine no 20). (There is a playing of flutes and violins and trumpets, for they are dancing the wedding-dance of my best-beloved. There is a thunder and booming of kettle-drums and shawms. In between, you can hear the good cupids sobbing and moaning.) 10. Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen (Heine no 40). (When I hear that song which my love once sang, my breast bursts with wild affliction. Dark longing drives me to the forest hills, where my too-great woe pours out in tears.) 11. Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (Heine no 39). (A youth loved a maiden who chose another: the other loved another girl, and married her. The maiden married, from spite, the first and best man that she met with: the youth was sickened at it. It's the old story, and it's always new: and the one whom she turns aside, she breaks his heart in two.) 12. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen (Heine no 45). (On a sunny summer morning I went out into the garden: the flowers were talking and whispering, but I was silent. They looked at me with pity, and said, 'Don't be cruel to our sister, you sad, death-pale man.')13. 13. Ich hab' im Traum geweinet (Heine no 55). (I wept in my dream, for I dreamt you were in your grave: I woke, and tears ran down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, thinking you had abandoned me: I woke, and cried long and bitterly. I wept in my dream, dreaming you were still good to me: I woke, and even then my floods of tears poured forth.)
14. Allnächtlich im Traume (Heine no 56). (I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and there is no sprig, and I have forgotten what the word was.)
15. Aus alten Märchen winkt es (Heine no 43). (The old fairy tales tell of a magic land where great flowers shine in the golden evening light, where trees speak and sing like a choir, and springs make music to dance to, and songs of love are sung such as you have never heard, till wondrous sweet longing infatuates you! Oh, could I only go there, and free my heart, and let go of all pain, and be blessed! Ah! I often see that land of joys in dreams: then comes the morning sun, and it vanishes like smoke.)
16. Die alten, bösen Lieder (Heine no 65). (The old bad songs, and the angry, bitter dreams, let us now bury them, bring a large coffin. I shall put very much therein, I shall not yet say what: the coffin must be bigger than the 'Tun' at Heidelberg. And bring a bier of stout, thick planks, they must be longer than the Bridge at Mainz. And bring me too twelve giants, who must be mightier than the Saint Christopher in the cathedral at Cologne. They must carry the coffin and throw it in the sea, because a coffin that large needs a large grave to put it in. Do you know why the coffin must be so big and heavy? I will also put my love and my suffering into it).
As a bonus, here is Souzay singing Widmung. In "Widmung," Schumann confessed all of the things his beloved Clara Wieck (Schumann) was to him; his peace, angel, repose, rapture, heart, soul, grave for sorrows, better self and his heaven. In this carefully balanced arrangement of text and music, he revealed the depth of his engagement as a poet-musician. This spirited song contains a few devices which reappeared in his later works, including sweeping keyboard passages and the haunting enharmonic progression (A flat major to E flat major) to the central section. He altered the text by repeating the final verse, and these last measures contain a thoughtful instrumental effect, which eclipses the text and introduces a new motif.
Also, make sure that you check out our recent post of Austrian barihunk Markus Werba singing Schumann's "Faust."
American barihunk Matt Trevino has won the Austin Critics’ Table Award for his performance in Michael Nyman's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" at the Austin Lyric Opera.
In its 16th year, the Austin Critics’ Table is an informal group of arts critics from the American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle that annually recognizes outstanding achievement in the arts. This year’s awards recognize events between May 1, 2010 and April 30, 2011.
Trevino is next scheduled to sing at the Nashville Opera in Verdi's "La Traviata" in October.
Popular barihunk Rod Gilfry, a star of both opera and musical theater, is receiving a Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award from Arts Orange County. Gilfry received his bachelor's degree in music education from Cal State Fullerton.
All honorees will receive a "Spark of Imagination" bronze trophy sculpted by Orange County artist Christopher Schulz.
Tickets for the 12th annual awards will be available later during the summer. Emcees will be Jonelle Allen, the award-winning Broadway actress who's best known for her six seasons as Grace on the TV series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," and Richard Stein, executive director of Arts Orange County. For more information, call 714-556-5160 or visit artsoc.org.
Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" is certainly not a "barihunk opera" like "Billy Budd" or "Rape of Lucretia," but it is one opera's greatest pieces of theater. The opera premiered on June 7, 1945 and was the first opera to be performed at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre near the end of the Second World War.
Britten’s first full length, and possibly best known, opera originated in part from the composer’s reading of the article ‘George Crabbe: the Poet and the Man’ by E.M. Forster, which appeared in The Listener in May 1941. It was through Forster that Britten developed an interest in the work of Crabbe, a fellow East Anglian, a curate as well as a writer born in the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh on the east coast of England in 1754. Peter Pears purchased a volume of Crabbe’s poetry shortly after Britten read Forster’s article and, as he was later to inscribe in the flyleaf of the book, it was from his and Britten’s reading of the long poem ‘The Borough’ that “we started work on the plans for making an opera out of Peter Grimes”.
Britten and Pears were at the time resident in the United States and had of course come into contact with a number of American musicians and music lovers. They met Serge Koussevitzky, the Russian born American conductor who became a champion of the young composer’s work. The Koussevitzky Music Foundation was set up to support the encouragement of new music and it was through this that Britten was awarded a $1,000 commission to write an opera. Britten realised his debt of gratitude to the conductor and the opera is dedicated to the memory of Koussevitsky’s wife Natalie. It was Koussevitsky’s request that Britten’s manuscript of the full score of Peter Grimes remain in America and it can seen at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
Philip Langridge: "Old Joe has gone fishing":
In 1942 Britten and Pears returned to England, but it was not until January 1944 that work was begun on the opera. Composition took place while Britten was living in the converted Mill in Snape, five miles from Aldeburgh. The scenario was selected from one section of George Crabbe’s poem about the lives of people on the Suffolk coast. For Crabbe, Peter Grimes was a sadistic figure whose rough ways earn little sympathy from the reader. The character is, however, depicted somewhat differently in Britten’s opera. The story was adapted by Montagu Slater, with the assistance of Britten, Pears, Ronald Duncan and Eric Crozier. The Grimes of Britten’s opera, although isolated and at times violent, is more to be pitied than despised. In the words of Peter Pears he is ‘neither a hero, nor a villain’.
We haven't featured one of our most popular singers in awhile, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, so we thought the release of his new CD would be a great excuse. Here are two features, one is an audio interview with Brooke Green from ABC Classic FM. Click HERE to listen.
Teddy Bare
The other is a video about the the CD, "Serious Songs." The recording features Johannes Brahms' "Serious Songs" with an updated orchestration by Detlev Glanert, Schubert's "Erlkonig," excerpts from the Brahms Requiem, Samuel Barber's "Dover Beach" and four Schubert songs.
