Performances to Stream June 24-25, 2023
This weekend brings us performances from the United States, Germany, Austria, Australia, Spain, England, Brazil, and Poland. Everything from the Renaissance to atonal modern era is on display.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from Madison Opera on WPR
One lamentation I could make about my enjoyment of opera is that I do not get to hear soprano Elizabeth Caballero nearly as often as I should like. That changes for me this week as we get a broadcast from Madison Opera in Wisconsin, which is part of the Great Lakes region of the United States for any of my international readers. When I learned of this some weeks ago, I started counting down the weekends until I could joyously make this announcement, and the time has finally arrived! This performance hails from a run in April of this year and features one of my favorite divas as La Contessa Almaviva. For those unfamiliar with the story, Figaro and his wife Susanna are getting married. Both of them are servants in the house of Almaviva. The Count and Countess, slightly older than they were in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, are dealing with some marital issues that stem from Almaviva’s roving eye toward Susanna and other young ladies. Cherubino, a page boy, also feels his first pining for love take hold and finds himself in sticky situations fairly often due to his present infatuation with the Countess. In the end, Susanna and the Countess bring Almaviva to his senses by hook or by crook, and he finally helps Figaro and Susanna get married. This opera was the first of Mozart’s legendary collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, and it was composed in 1786 and met with tremendous success from its premiere. Our cast stars Jasmine Habersham as Susanna, Elizabeth Caballero as Countess Almaviva, Matt Boehler as Figaro, Michael Adams as Count Almaviva, and Kirsten Lippart as Cherubino. Stephanie Rhodes Russell conducts this recorded performance. It is scheduled to air on WPR on Saturday, June 24, 2023, at 12 PM CDT. It will not be available for future listening, which means I will most certainly tune in for this!
Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci from the Wiener Staatsoper on Ö1
These two operas, which are most commonly performed alongside each other, are staples of the verismo style of opera. After the high drama and usual cast of nobility of the bel canto and Verdi eras, the final decades of the 1800’s and the turn of the century brought us a new style of opera more focused on the lives of ordinary people with whom audiences could easily identify and see themselves in the characters. Puccini is probably the best known composer of this era, but Mascagni and Leoncavallo are synonymous with the style, as well. These operas premiered a few years apart from each other in the 1890’s, and their pairing due to their shared language and short runtimes for operas was almost immediate and has endured as repertory practice around the world. Cavalleria Rusticana was the more successful of the two operas initially, but they are now both audience favorites year upon year. The cast for Cavalleria Rusticana features Elena Stikhina as Santuzza, Yonghoon Lee as Turiddu, Noa Beinart as Lucia, Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Alfio, and Isabel Signoret as Lola. Pagliacci stars Yonghoon Lee as Canio, Asmik Grigorian as Nedda, Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Tonio, Jörg Schneider as Beppo, and Stefan Astakhov as Silvio. Daniel Harding leads both operas. This performance is live and scheduled for airing on Ö1’s Opernabend at 5:00 PM GMT on Saturday, June 24, 2023. It will be available for future listening following the broadcast.
Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore from the Teatre L'Atlàntida on Catalunya Música
Back in the realm of high drama to which I alluded earlier, we have a pair of noble brothers who do not know each other in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Manrico, the titular troubador, is in love with Leonora, who also loves him. However, the Conte di Luna hopes to marry Leonora himself and views Manrico as a rival. Manrico lives as the son of Azucena, a local gypsy, but he learns from her that she is not his true mother. Azucena’s mother was burned alive by Conte di Luna’s father when he occupied the seat of nobility, and Azucena swore to avenge her mother’s death. She took the count’s younger son with the intention of throwing him into the fire, but it was her own son she murdered instead! The elder Conte di Luna was sure the infant bones in the fire could not be his son’s, so on his deathbed he made his son swear an oath to find his brother when he gained the title of Conte di Luna. Conte di Luna, furious at Manrico for impeding his hopes of marriage, captures both Azucena and Manrico with plans to execute them. Leonora tries to intercede to no avail and so must make a promise to marry the count if Manrico is to be freed. Consuming poison from her ring so that she can safely renege on her word, Leonora delivers the news to Manrico that he is freed. He refuses to leave his captivity when he learns that Leonora cannot join him. He feels betrayed by Leonora until the effects of the poison she took start to show and he realizes what she has done for him. As she expires her final breaths, she reveals that she would rather die with Manrico than to marry anyone else, and her wish comes true. Di Luna has heard her confession and punishes Manrico with death. Azucena awakens to discover Manrico has died and reveals to di Luna that he has committed fratricide and cries that her mother’s death has finally been avenged. Like I mentioned regarding last weekend’s Verdi opera, this one also features some of the most easily recognizable Verdi tunes you are likely to have heard even outside of trhe opera world, so keep your ears open for them! The cast for this performance included Gustavo Porta as Manrico, Maribel Ortega as Leonora, Carles Daza as Conte di Luna, Laura Vila as Azucena, and David Cervera as Ferrando. Daniel Gil de Tejada conducted in this performance from May 21, 2023. This broadcast is scheduled for Saturday, June 24, 2023, at 5:00 PM GMT on Catalunya Música’s Directe a l'òpera. It will be available for future listening following this initial airing.
Alban Berg’s Wozzeck from the Royal Albert Hall on BBC Radio 3
If you were searching for the “psychological thriller” section of opera, Berg’s Wozzeck ought to be on the shortlist for you. Composed in an atonal style in the early 1900’s, it takes the opera world from the realm of versimo to a world of hyper-realism. One cannot help but to feel the influence of the German schools of philosophical thought of the day in this music and the story. Our title character Wozzeck is a navy man with mental illness. Ultimately, he murders his girlfriend for infidelity and commits suicide in an attempt to hide his crime and run from his guilt. Tragically, their son is left without parents. This opera is not for those who want a relaxing form of entertainment on a Saturday; it is for those who want a performance that will knock them to the ground with atonal musical analysis, the never-ending attempt to pinpoint where themes begin and end in the music, and the desperate desire to escape the doom you know is coming at the end of the story. It is raw and unruly, but if that is how you prefer to be entertained, it exists for your benefit. The cast boasts the talents of Christian Gerhaher as Wozzeck, Anja Kampe as Marie, Peter Hoare as Captain, Brindley Sherratt as Doctor, Rosie Aldridge as Margret, Clay Hilley as Drum Major, Sam Furness as Andres, Barnaby Rea as First Apprentice, Alex Otterburn as Second Apprentice, and John Findon as The Fool under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano. This performance airs on BBC Radio 3’s Opera on 3 on Saturday, June 24, 2023, at 5:30 PM GMT, and it will be available for listening following the broadcast.
Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire from the Cecília Meireles Hall on Rádio MEC FM
Of all the works to have ever enjoyed an American premiere in a Broadway theatre, a setting of poems by Arnold Schönberg was probably your very last guess for such an introduction to an American public. Nevertheless, in 1923 America heard Pierrot Lunaire for the first time at the Klaw Theatre (later renamed to the Avon Theatre), a house with a capacity of some 805 seats in Midtown Manhattan. Why would you not expect such a thing? Schönberg, like Berg, is remembered mostly as a composer of atonal music. He would later go on to develop his strict 12 tone system, but this work predates that innovation by almost a decade. The work is scored for one singer, generally a soprano, and a chamber instrumental ensemble. Pierrot (Little Peter) sings three sets of poems. The first set involves love and religious themes; the second part deals with acts of crime, violence, and blasphemy; the third set describes his journey home to Bergamo. This performance stars mezzo-soprano Carolina Faria as Pierrot. The musicians are conducted by Priscila Bomfim. The broadcast is scheduled for 8:00 PM GMT on Saturday, June 24, 2023, on Rádio MEC FM’s Plateia. Recorded on June 2, 2023, it will be available for future listening following its initial airing.
Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser from the Arts Center Melbourne on ABC Classic
One of Wagner’s two operas that deal with singing competitions, Tannhäuser focuses on the song contest of Wartburg. The characters try to distinguish which is the purest form of love, sacred or profane. As I have recounted in an earlier post, Tannhäuser escapes from Venus, or Frau Holda depending on which production you attend, and returns to Wartburg with a the Landgraf’s hunting party, where he hopes to rekindle a relationship with Elisabeth. Tannhäuser, with one foot in Christendom and one foot recently removed from the realm of Venus, enters the Wartburg song contest over which Elisabeth is to preside. He mocks other knights’ songs and sings his own song to Venus, which he feels has more passion in it than the Christian knights with their ballads of courtly, respectable love. Saved from a death sentence by Elisabeth, Tannhäuser makes a pilgrimage to Rome in pennance to atone with the Pope, but he is met with scorn and denial from the Holy Father, who told him that, like his staff can never bear leaves or fruit, there can be no salvation for him. Elisabeth’s health takes a turn for the worse back home, but Tannhäuser escapes Rome on foot to return to where he hopes he may find peace. He meets Wolfram along the way and tells the story of his encounter with the Pope and finishes by begging Venus to welcome him back to her. Wolfram fights with him to reject Venus and finally succeeds in reminding him of Elisabeth, who is being carried on a funeral bier near them. Tannhäuser is brought back to his senses and asks Elisabeth to pray for him as he dies. Other pilgrims from Rome pass along the way and are heard remarking at the phenomenon that the Pope’s staff has sprouted new leaves!
Our cast for this performance, which was recorded on May 20, 2023, starred Stefan Vinke as Tannhäuser, Amber Wagner as Elisabeth, Timo Riihonen as Landgraf Hermann, Samuel Dundas as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Anna-Louise Cole as Venus,
Richard Anderson as Biterolf/Reinmar von Zweter, Thomas Strong as Walther von der Vogelweide, Iain Henderson as Heinrich der Schreiber, Agnes Sarkis as Shepherd, and Leah Thomas, Angela Hogan, Louise Keast, and Margaret Trubiano are the Four Pages. Ascher Fisch leads the Opera Australia Chorus and the Orchestra Victoria. This performance airs at 8:30 AM GMT on Sunday, June 25, 2023, on ABC Classic’s Sunday Opera. It will be available for future listening.
Matthew Locke and Christopher Gibbons’s Cupid and Death from the Pigage-Theater on SWR 2
After that venture into Wagnerian drama, a listener might like a turn toward comedy and a rinse of the ear with music of the early English Baroque era. English composers Matthew Locke and Christopher Gibbons joined forces to produce this masque in which Cupid and Death mistakenly mix up their arrows while staying at the same inn. Where Death once shot the feeble and elderly to bring their time on Earth to a close, they are now struck with the joy of love and passion for lovers. Cupid, whose sights are set on the young, now brings death to those who are well before their time to leave the world and its pleasures. Roman deity Mercury eventually notices this disarray to the natural order of things and sets it straight. Cupid is also banished from the courts of princes and exiled into the cottages of ordinary folk.
Notably, one might recognize the name of Gibbons insofar as English composers are concerned; indeed, Christopher Gibbons is the second son of English Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons, and he continued the family pursuit of music into the early Baroque forms that are such a treat for us to enjoy. Thankfully, this work has existed in its complete form ever since its publication in 1653. Our cast includes the vocal talents of actors Fiamma Bennett and Soufiane Guerraoui and singers Perrine Devillers, Lieselot De Wilde, Yannis François, Nicholas Merryweather, Blandine de Sansal, and Antonin Rondepierre. Sebastian Daucé weilds the baton over his Ensemble Correspondances. This performance is scheduled for Sunday, June 25, 2023 at 6:00 PM GMT on SWR 2. It will be available for future listening. This performance hails from the renowned Schwetzingen Festival in Germany.
The Officium Ensemble Performs Renaissance Music from the San Jerónimo Monastery for the Granada International Music and Dance Festival on Radio Clásica
Pedro Teixeira brings his Officium Ensemble to Granada to share some exquisite vocal works from composers of the European Renaissance in an ancient monastery from the 1500’s. For those interested, this is my dream job in the world of music! The ensemble’s selections include:
Sebastián de Vivanco’s Assumpsit Iesus, a 5 and Kyrie & Gloria from Missa Assumpsit est Iesus, a 5.
Estêvâo Lopes Morago’s Montes Israel, a 5.
Sebastián de Vivanco’s Surge, Petre, a 5, Credo from Missa Assumpsit est Iesus, a 5/ O, Domine Iesu Christe, a 5, and Sanctus & Agnus Dei from Missa Assumpsit est Iesus, a 5.
Filipe de Magalhaes’s Commissa mea, a 6.
Manuel Cardoso’s Sitivit anima mea, a 6.
Sebastián de Vivanco’s Quae es ista, a 5 and Surrexit pastor bonus, a 5.
Tomas Luis de Victoria’s O sacrum convivium, a 6.
This live concert is scheduled for Sunday, June 25, 2023 on Radio Clásica’s Fila Cero at 10:30 GMT and will be available for future listening.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, BWV 232, from Oliwa Cathedral Gdansk on Dwójka
Bach seems a perfectly fitting composer with which to wrap this week’s streaming concert announcement. Comprised of many early works from Bach, this mass was only completed a year prior to the titan composer’s death. Coincidentally, this mass was initially put together at the occasion of Augustus II of Poland’s death in 1733. Bach hoped he might earn a court title from his heir, Augustus III. Presenting an initial sample of the Kyrie eleison and Gloria sections, he included a small inscription expressing his desire to be rid of Leipzig. Augustus III had a cool reception to this request at first, but he made Bach his court composer in 1736. Bach devoted much of his last years of life to the expansion of the mass from its earlier form, making it one of the hallmarks of his catalog of compositions. The soloists from this performance on June 17, 2023, included soprano Olga Kulchynska, countertenor Iestyn Davies, tenor Fabio Trümpy, and bass Mariusz Godlewski. Jan Lukaszewski conducted the Polish Chamber Choir and the (oh!) Orkiestra. This performance is scheduled to air on Sunday, June 25, 2023, at 6:00 PM GMT on Dwójka Polskie Radio’s Filharmonia Dwójki. It should be available for future listening following its airing.