Dotted Notes…
[This is only one excerpt from the complete Dotted Notes found in our magazine.]
From Leonard Lehrman:
The New York premiere Feb. 23, 2008 of Dark Heaven Angel by Garth Edwin Sunderland, Music Editor of the Leonard Bernstein Office and Artistic Director of the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, was performed by solo cellist Eric Jacobsen, occasionally using two bows, and inadvertently assisted by car horns from outside Judson Memorial Church. The major work presented by said Ensemble also featured Mr. Jacobsen, and five players, conducted by Silas Huff, with solo dancer Dora Arreola, in Peter Maxwell Davies’s “Vesalii Icones,” a sensitive 14-part instrumental passion narrative from Gethsemane to the Resurrection, as inspired by 16th century drawings, De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius. Said drawings of the nude male figure, gradually transformed into a skeleton, were graciously reproduced in the program, so one could follow the stations of the cross as they proceeded one to the other with little pause in between. The Calendar for New Music announcement labeled the work “controversial” and warned: “Program contains nudity.” Only in America. In Europe, where performances of the work have been less rare than here, a female whose areolas are top-free,
as Ms. Arreola’s briefly were, is hardly considered “nude.”…
The NY premiere of William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony, with the Boston Symphony conducted
by James Levine at Carnegie Hall Mar. 3, was an event worthy of celebration. Based entirely on William Blake’s Prophetic Books, which have also inspired Thomas Adès and numerous other composers, including this writer,
the work is really an oratorio, in 4 movements, beginning and ending with portions of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (ca. 1790), with excerpts from America: A Prophecy (ca. 1793) and Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion (ca. 1804-20) in between. After a roaring opening, the middle movements employ soli, words spoken over percussion, and a cappella writing, with organum-like open fifths depicting the “land of shades.” Ascending scales in harmonic minor, sometimes with raised fourth and lowered seventh, characterize the finale, ending in a quasi-Blochian blaze. John Oliver’s Tanglewood Festival Chorus acquitted themselves well….
The opera Our Town by Ned Rorem (b. 1923) with libretto by J. D. McClatchy after the play by Thornton Wilder, given its NY premiere at Juilliard Apr. 23 (& 25 & 27), takes a while to get going in its rambling first act. But the second and third acts, sensibly presented without a second intermission, make the wait worthwhile. Jennifer Zetlan was particularly outstanding as Emily, in a cast of 14 plus chorus, and given lovely flights of coloratura in expressing the late regret for not having cherished life while living it, which is the essential message of both play and opera. The composer’s use of hymn tunes that go in and out of the often complex but relatively accessible texture is very effective, coming across as virtually inevitable in their appropriateness to the sad, lyrical story. Anne Manson was the dynamic conductor, Edward Berkeley the discreet but imaginative stage director. Along with Copland’s Tender Land, and a number of works by Barber, Beeson, Bernstein, Blitzstein, Floyd, Moore, Siegmeister, and Ward, this work should be regarded as one of the great, classic, American operas….
Lee Hoiby (b. 1926) is also in, or near, that class, with several of his operas, including The Scarf (1958), A Month in the Country (1964) (originally called Natalia Petrovna, a revision in which I was pleased to have been called as a consultant), and Summer and Smoke (1971), which I have yet to see but would like to. Like Our Town, his one-act opera This Is the Rill Speaking (1992), on a libretto by his life companion Mark Shulgasser, after the play by Lanford Wilson, also takes place in a small town in America, only a little later, circa 1950. Six singers play eleven roles of widely-varying ages, displaying similarities of personalities across generations. The music is unabashedly tonal, and quite lovely. SUNY-Purchase and American Opera Projects united to present the work in its professional premiere at Purchase Apr. 26, along with Hoiby’s full-length opera, The Tempest (1986), also with a libretto by Shulgasser, after Shakespeare. The Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space hosted an evening with the one-act and just excerpts of the larger work Apr. 28, which left one wanting to hear more of it, of course. Benton Hess was the confident conductor, Ned Canty the director, in the shorter work. Jacque Trussel and Hugh Murphy were, respectively, director and conductor of the larger work, which featured some awesome coloratura sung by Molly Davey as Ariel. Eric Barry as Caliban displayed a nice lyric tenor, unfortunately often covered….
The New York Virtusoso Singers (See ACA Festival comments, Program #1) was, frankly, more impressive when expanded to 16 voices in the Elliott Carter 100th birthday celebration conducted by Harold Rosenbaum at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church Sunday afternoon, November 2, especially in the early works, dating between 1936 and 1947. Soprano soloist Melissa Kelley was particularly fine in the setting of Robert Herrick’s “To Music.” But all the settings—of Dickinson, Ovid, Tate, and more Herrick, were sensitively composed and performed with love and care. The most recent work, “Mad Regales” (2007) for a cappella sextet, was the most ambitious, and still in need of a bit of seasoning. The NY premiere of an Arnold Schönberg arrangement of an American folksong was a strange, though not unpleasant way to end the afternoon.
[Leonard Lehrman’s further comments on “Operas About Town,” including recent performances of works by Daniel Felsenfeld, Jennifer Griffith, Robert Manno, Adam Silverman, and Peter Westergaard, as well as his remarks on “A Day to Remember”—June 7, 2008—and the Lincoln Bicentennial (Feb. 12, 2009) appear on our website.