Verdi began work on Rigoletto, librettist Francesco Maria Piave’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse, in 1850. At first, it looked set to suffer the same problems as its predecessor, Stiffelio, which had fallen foul of the censors in Trieste, but Piave’s judicious adjustments to Hugo’s text paved the way for the work’s riotous success at its premiere at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. Within a decade, Verdi’s thriller had been staged in more than 250 theaters worldwide. The vivacious score, embracing both the court of the lascivious Duke of Mantua and the violence of his city’s underworld, attracted many an interpreter and arranger, not least Franz Liszt. This evening’s brass quintet arrangement is therefore in sparklingly good company, even if the music of Monterone’s curse, with which the fantasy begins, strikes a much darker note.
Five short dances
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Leonard Bernstein’s music often had a terpsichorean bent. Shortly after he became a household name, thanks to his last-minute substitution for Bruno Walter at a New York Philharmonic concert in 1943, he made his mark as a composer with Fancy Free. The ballet was written for choreographer Jerome Robbins and staged at the Metropolitan Opera by American Ballet Theatre. Its central idea was soon to become the basis for Bernstein’s first Broadway musical, On the Town, while its inimitable brand of sassy, jazz-inflected dance would be the hallmark of many later scores, including Wonderful Town and West Side Story, as well as more “serious” works, such as Bernstein’s Second Symphony, The Age of Anxiety, and the Chichester Psalms. The Dance Suite, written in 1989, was the composer- conductor’s final work. It is structured over five movements, each of which is dedicated to a major figure in contem porary American dance. The opening “Dancisca,” written for Antony Tudor, fuses Monteverdian fanfares and a more strutting style, while the curt “Waltz” that follows was imagined for Agnes de Mille. The even briefer “Bi-Tango” was invented with Mikhail Baryshnikov in mind. Following a tribute to the great George Balanchine, Bernstein closes his final work with its most extended movement, “MTV,” for Jerome Robbins, whose choreography had so brilliantly invigorated both Fancy Free and the ever-popular West Side Story.
