Festival Focus August 13, 2018

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Sarah Chang Special Event August 15 at 8:30 pm in Harris Concert Hall Violin superstar Sarah Chang plays a recital featuring Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins with student Katherine Woo.

Lise de la Salle Recital August 14 at 7:30 pm in Harris Concert Hall French pianist Lise de la Salle plays a recital featuring works by Mozart, Fauré, and Chopin.

Jonathan Biss Completes Sonata Cycle August 16 and 18 at 8 pm in Harris Concert Hall Jonathan Biss finishes his three-year Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle with two recitals this week.

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The 2018 Aspen Music Festival and School season comes to a close at 4 pm on Sunday, August 19, in the Benedict Music Tent. AMFS Music Director Robert Spano will lead the Aspen Festival Orchestra and soloists Tamara Wilson and Ryan McKinny in scenes from Wagner’s Die Walküre followed by Berlioz’s magnificent Symphonie fantastique

Final Sunday: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique JESSICA CABE

Festival Focus Writer

There is perhaps no better work to close the Aspen Music Festival and School’s 2018 season, themed, “Paris, City of Light,” than Berlioz’s large-scale, dramatic Symphonie fantastique.

“It’s really the signature work of the French nineteenth century,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “It essentially defines French Romanticism and was im-

mediately understood at the time as having created the idea of French Romantic music. It’s a big one.”

The work, as described in PBS’s Keeping Score series, is about an “artist’s self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman. The symphony describes his obsession and dreams, tantrums and moments of tenderness, and visions of suicide and murder, ecstasy and despair.”

At the time he wrote it, in 1830, Berlioz was in love, from afar, with

the English actress Harriet Smithson, and he wrote this symphony for her.

“Berlioz was smitten—love at first sight—with Smithson,” says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor Asadour Santourian. “To get her attention, because he was just a young composition student and here she was portraying Ophelia and Juliet in professional productions in Paris, he wrote this symphony. He wrote

it in at a rather fast pace, and produced it, and performed it, and got noticed—and then she noticed him.” The two eventually married, then separated, but are buried together in Montmartre Cemetery.

In addition to masterfully telling a love story, and inspiring a real-life one, Symphonie fantastique is epic in musical scope and scale and was groundbreaking in its time.

See Final Sunday, Festival Focus page 3

Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann opens tomorrow CAITLIN CAUSEY

Festival Focus Writer

Soprano Elizabeth Novella portrays the doomed Antonia, who appears in the second act of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, on August 14, 16, and 18.

Summer after summer, the Aspen Opera Center (AOC) offers an abundance of performance opportunities for rising opera singers. Among these, notes fourth-year student and soprano Elizabeth Novella, is the chance to perish in character for the first time.

“Surprisingly, I have yet to die onstage,” she jokes of her previous experience, which includes roles she performed as a postgrad at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. “As a soprano, this is more common than one might think, but I am excited to explore and work through this operatic rite of

passage.”

Novella is set to portray Antonia in the AOC’s upcoming production of Les contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach at the Wheeler Opera House on August 14, 16, and 18. Antonia, who appears in the opera’s second act, does indeed succumb to a condition that claims her life through an otherwise innocuous activity: singing. The character’s death, life, and all the artistic work behind the two will make for a fine feather in Novella’s cap when she leaves Aspen for future endeavors.

“Elizabeth [Novella] is right at the point where this is a great role for her to be devel-

oping,” says AOC Director Edward Berkeley. “There’s a weight, humor, and pathos built into the character.”

Les contes d’Hoffmann premiered in Paris in February 1881, just four months after its composer passed away. The story centers around Hoffmann, a poet, and his tales of doomed romance. As Hoffmann sits waiting in the Prologue for his unrequited love Stella (an opera singer, no less) to finish a performance, he recalls three former infatuations that ended in disaster.

Act I introduces Olympia, an eccentric inventor’s mechanical doll, whom Hoffmann See Hoffmann, Festival Focus page 3

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Seraphic Fire Professional Choral Institute post-season recitals CAITLIN CAUSEY

Festival Focus Writer

This summer, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) and the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire together launch a new educational program in Aspen, specifically designed to prepare emerging singers to work in the growing industry of professional ensemble singing.

Bonus: Aspen audiences will enjoy a wealth of new repertoire in performance, from vocal Renaissance works, spirituals, and contemporary works performed at two choral recitals on August 20 and 22, up to a full performance of Mozart’s beloved Requiem, performed with the Aspen Chamber Symphony on August 17.

Seraphic Fire Executive Director Rhett M. Del Campo notes that “small chamber singing has really exploded in this country” in recent years. Despite the trend, students who aspire to perform with professional ensembles have very limited educational stepping-stones to help them get there. He hopes that Seraphic Fire’s Professional Choral Institute (PCI) at the AMFS will become a bridge for those young vocalists.

“This new program provides students with a natural progression in their careers—whereas before they had to choose between being a soloist or working in opera or a large chorus,” Del Campo says. “Now there’s a small ensemble option. Fifteen years ago there wasn’t a solid path, but now there is.”

“Our goal was to attract a minimum of twenty students,”

says AMFS Vice President and Dean of Students Jennifer White. “And we have forty-two. We knew there was a need, but once we opened auditions last fall it just took off.”

She adds of the PCI’s impact, “Having a Grammy-nominated ensemble for the students to learn from and work with, in addition to the opportunity to connect the singers with top instrumentalists for world-class performances, has allowed for successful recruitment of this inaugural class.”

Seraphic Fire, which Gramophone has called an “extraordinary” group of “mellifluous and crystalline artistry,” will sing in three concerts in the coming week. First, August 17, they perform in Mozart’s sublime Requiem with the Aspen Chamber Symphony. On August 20 the group gives a recital in Harris Concert Hall, followed by a second with their PCI student singers on August 22. The combined programs offer a tour de force of rich choral works

by Monteverdi, Tavener, Rheinberger, Pärt, Theofanidis, and including Fauré’s Requiem.

Seraphic Fire Founder Patrick Dupré Quigley says the first recital features works that the ensemble is most known for, plus pieces they “commissioned or premiered that are now becoming standard repertoire in the choral world.” He adds that Marshall’s Hymnotic Delays is “one of the most fascinating works on the program...one of those places where old meets new quite brilliantly.” Another highlight of the evening is AMFS composer-in-residence Christopher Theofanidis’s Four Levertov Settings, dedicated to Music Director Robert Spano.

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FINAL SUNDAY: Wagner’s Die Walküre with vocal soloists Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire performs with the Aspen Chamber Symphony on August 17 and in recital on August 20 and 22.

Of the August 22 performance, Quigley says it “features some pieces that an audience would almost never hear in North America [including] Clytus Gottwald’s arrangement of the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for sixteen-part chorus,” which he remarks “is a heart-stopping piece.” The program also features Fauré’s poignant and profound Requiem, “a crown jewel of French Belle Epoque art” evoking the “glories of nineteenth-century France.”

All three events are for sale through the AMFS website and box office and are open to AMFS passholders.

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It is scored for more than ninety instruments. “The orches- classical canon.

AMFS Music Director Robert Spano conducts the Aspen tration, the use of two tubas, the use of the harp on stage instead of the pit for the ballet or opera, the masked brasses, Festival orchestra and soloists, bass-baritone Ryan McKinny and the percussion that was used—many, many firsts in this and soprano Tamara Wilson—both alumni of the AMFS and fast-rising opera stars. symphony,” Santourian “These two alumni of says. “It continues to be “It’s really the signature work of our program have become a point of discovery for the French nineteenth century. It some of the most imporlisteners. It continues to inform all of us why the essentially defines French Romanticism tant dramatic singers in the world,” says Fletcher.

Classical Period moved and was immediately understood at “They’ve both made sensato the Romantic Period tional Met debuts. It’s really with the fertile imaginathe time as having created the idea of exciting—I would even say tion of Berlioz in Paris and thrilling—to have them doing Beethoven in Vienna.”

French Romantic music.” these important Wagnerian Sunday’s program also roles now when we heard features selected scenes Alan Fletcher AMFS President and CEO them here back when they from Wagner’s Die were in their early twenties.”

Walküre, one of the opWilson will sing the part of Brünnhilde, and McKinny will eras in the composer’s famous Ring Cycle and featuring Ride of the Valkyries, some of the most recognizable music in the sing her father, in a scene where she has disobeyed him, and

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he punishes her by putting her to sleep and locking her in a circle of fire.

“It’s a brilliant way to end our summer because the orchestration depicts all of this, including the fire,” says Santourian.

Wilson said she’s excited to return to Aspen for the second time as a guest artist and to sing this music. “I love the fact that these Norse Gods have these real moments of humanity in Walküre,” Wilson says. “While circumstances are very extreme, it’s still just a father and daughter fighting with each other because they each feel that what they are doing is right.

The final duet in Act III has some of the most gorgeous music.”

Wilson says she’s thrilled to have the opportunity to sing in the Tent with McKinny, whom she’s known for about fifteen years.

“It is wonderful to be closing the season with such an amazing program,” Wilson says. “I’m just so grateful that AMFS has supported me and my career for so long. Hopefully Ryan and I can help inspire the next generation of AMFS students.”

The Final Sunday concert will take place at 4 pm on August 19 in the Benedict Music Tent.

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

Family Concert for all ages Thursday HOFFMANN: ‘a singing-actor’s dream’ TALIA SMITH

Festival Focus Writer

The one program in the Aspen Music Festival and School’s summer lineup where it is perfectly acceptable to dance, laugh, and clap along in time—or completely out of time!—with the music is the free Family Concert on August 16, truly meant for all ages.

Aligning nicely with the summer theme, “Paris, City of Light,” children and their families will hear and learn about Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals which features several short movements representative of animals.

“The neatest part about the family concert is we make it a really engaging and kid-appropriate event,” says Katie Hone Wiltgen, director of education and community programming for AMFS. “I have a seven-year-old and a fouryear-old. I know very well how kids behave, AUBREE DALLAS or more likely, do not behave in concert situKids can explore music performance and instruments at the 4 pm ations. We’re really realistic in terms of what we Kids Notes, followed by the Family Concert featuring Camille Saintshould expect out of kids.”

Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals in Harris Concert Hall at 5 pm.

The program begins at the Meadows Hoson a big screen, and kinesthetically engage with the pitality Tent with Kids Notes at 4 pm where participants can enjoy pre-concert snacks, crafts, and music using a craft that they make during Kids Notes. activities designed for kids ages seven and under. “We The performance will be accompanied by a poetry all know happy kids are kids who are well-fed and have reading and a choreographer on stage to guide movehad naps,” says Wiltgen. “The event begins in the after- ment.

“The earlier we can get kids immersed in classical noon, after nap time, and there are free food and drinks available. The activities planned are designed to con- music and immersed in the arts in general, the more likely they are to make the arts part of their life as they nect kids to the repertoire they are about to hear.”

One notable activity is the “Instrument Petting Zoo” grow up,” says Wiltgen. “Giving these kids opportuniwhere children can interact with and play several dif- ties to experience and interact with the arts in this way ferent instruments they will see on stage including a is such a powerful gift we can give our children.”

This fall the AMFS AfterWorks program will prosaxophone, trumpet, oboe, and more. “It’s a really neat way for kids to get hands on experience with instru- vide even more music education opportunities to kids in the Valley. Registration for the three after ments,” says Wiltgen.

The performance of The Carnival of the Animals school programs, Beginning Strings, Lead Guitar, begins at 5 pm in Harris Concert Hall and covers the and Maroon Bel Canto Children’s Chorus, starts in different learning modalities, explains Wiltgen. Kids late August. To learn more about AMFS AfterWorks, will hear the music on stage, see a visual presentation visit www.aspenmusicfestival.com/AfterWorks.

Continued from Festival Focus page 1 is tricked into believing is a real woman. This illusion culminates in a heartbreaking collapse before the curtain comes down, when Hoffmann is left alone to be ridiculed by a crowd of onlookers. Act II follows the aforementioned Antonia with her untimely demise, and Act III features brazen Giulietta—a courtesan who seduces Hoffmann under fantastically false pretenses. She succeeds in duping the lovelorn poet, and ultimately leaves him in a tailspin.

By the epilogue, Hoffmann swears off love forever and drinks himself silly.

“I think this is one of Offenbach’s greatest works,” says Berkeley.

“I think he’s often underrated as a composer. This opera is genuinely fun with a lot of flavors; it can be dark but there is also this great, captivating sense of mysticism.”

Aspen Music Festival President and CEO Alan Fletcher adds that “it is also a work particularly good for our young singers.” Student Roy Hage, new to Aspen this year, will play the title character.

“The main challenge of the role is its length and the endurance needed—nothing quite prepares you for the stamina required to be on stage singing this kind of role for three hours,” says the tenor, who first portrayed Hoffmann with the Miami Music Festival last summer.

The character is a favorite among the forty-plus opera roles he’s performed in his young career. Here in Aspen, Hage has been studying with Vinson Cole, an AMFS artist-faculty member and legendary tenor who has performed Hoffmann numerous times and is intimately familiar with the role’s demands.

Hage notes that by the end of the opera Hoffmann has run the gamut of lovestruck emotion, observing that with Olympia he’s “young, bright-eyed, naïve, and optimistic,” yet with Antonia the poet is a “tender, gentle lover who remains optimistic but is more of a realist.” By the time Hoffmann encounters Giulietta, Hage says he’s “a total stud— he’s confident, sensual, and uninhibited to the point of recklessness.”

The singer concludes of his AOC debut, “To be able to play these very different personas, all in the same night, is a singing-actor’s dream.” The AOC presents The Tales of Hoffmann on August 14, 16, and 18 at the Wheeler Opera House.