THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON LYRIC OPERA | FALL 2018
INSIDE THIS ISSUE ARNOLD SCHOENBERG & THE EXILE EXPERIENCE THE FACTOTUMS OF THE CITY: ROSINA & FIGARO GAZES: SCHOENBERG, THE ARTIST AND...A SNEAK PEEK AT BARBER SETS & COSTUMES!
ESTHER NELSON, STANFORD CALDERWOOD GENERAL & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | DAVID ANGUS, MUSIC DIRECTOR | JOHN CONKLIN, ARTISTIC ADVISOR
WELCOME
EDITORIAL STAFF Cathy Emmons Sara O’Brien Lacey Upton Eileen Williston
No matter our age or generation, stories of the heart ring true. First in our 2018/19 Season, Rossini’s glorious music sparkles and shines in The Barber of Seville, an audience favorite for the ages. But there is also much bubbling beneath the surface of this heartwarming comedy; the satire and bite of Beaumarchais’ original plays inspired Mozart, Rossini, and countless other artists to reevaluate the social hierarchy of their time and imagine a world of egalitarian opportunity. Plus, as you’ll read on page 12, the central character of Rosina is hardly a blushing ingénue—plucky and determined, she is every bit as mesmerizing and effervescent as her male counterparts.
CONTRIBUTORS Lucy Caplan John Conklin Harlow Robinson Laura Stanfield Prichard Lacey Upton MISSION The mission of Boston Lyric Opera is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera by creating musically and theatrically compelling productions, events, and educational resources for our community and beyond. We produce opera in all forms, large to small, popular to lesser known, from early music to newly-commissioned works.
Fall also brings the World Premiere of Schoenberg in Hollywood, with Boston’s own Tod Machover taking on the famed composer whose own life played out like an opera— escaping Hitler’s Germany to land in 1930s Tinseltown. For Tod, Arnold Schoenberg is a personal inspiration. The opera illuminates many sides of this cultural icon: a musical innovator, an immigrant during uncertain times, a legendary teacher, a husband (not always the best), a Jewish man of both doubt and faith, and most importantly, an artist. Meanwhile, our search for a home venue continues on many fronts: working with developers, city officials, architects, and others. It’s no surprise that in one of the country’s hottest real estate markets, finding land—or a reasonably-priced existing building—is a daunting task. But there are also new opportunities for a new home that are exciting, a place that is contemporary, accessible, and also available to the larger performance arts community. We are grateful for our loyal supporters who continue to be behind this goal. In the meantime, we are pleased to produce in some of the city’s smaller theater jewels this Season, and also to bring opera into different neighborhoods with our innovative installations, which are increasingly praised around the country. We thank you for your ongoing support and for being part of our continued sell-out performances.
ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE Boston Lyric Opera 11 Avenue de Lafayette Boston, MA 02111-1736 P: 617.542.4912 | F: 617.542.4913 AUDIENCE SERVICES 617.542.6772 | boxoffice@blo.org PATRON SERVICES Bailey Kerr 617.542.4912 x 2450 | bkerr@blo.org
Our audiences are truly the engine behind our art. We invite you to learn more about our fall operas throughout this issue, and to share your thoughts and reactions with us online through social media, or by email to education@blo.org. See you at the opera!
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & EDUCATION Lacey Upton 617.542.4912 x2420 | education@blo.org EVENTS Sara O’Brien 617.542.4912 x2900 | sobrien@blo.org
Esther Nelson Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director
For a full listing of BLO staff, please visit BLO.org/about. GET SOCIAL WITH OPERA #BARBERBLO #HOLLYWOODBLO Facebook “f ” Logo
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BLO’s programs are funded, in part, by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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BLO NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS SAVE THE DATE! ARNOLD SCHOENBERG SYMPOSIUM NOV 17 | 1PM - 4PM Explore Schoenberg’s life, legacy, and music through talks and discussions with experts, an exhibition, and more. Visit BLO.org this fall for more details. In partnership with the MIT Media Lab and the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna
BRAVO TO DON BRAVO: FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE BLO ORCHESTRA, RETIRING THIS YEAR!
TABLE OF CONTENTS Vocal Acrobatics & Musical Wit: A History of The Barber of Seville...............2 High Five: Get to Know Barber in 5 Minutes or Less.................. 4 “Driven into the Paradise”: Arnold Schoenberg and the Exile Experience...............5 High Five: Get to Know Schoenberg in 5 Minutes or Less...............7
This fall, we bid a fond farewell to Don Bravo, bassoonist and the final founding member of the Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra. In 1956, Mr. Bravo joined the orchestra of New England Opera Theater; his first production was Domenico Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage, under the baton of Boris Goldovsky. NEOT merged with two other local companies in 1976 to form Boston Lyric Opera—and Mr. Bravo has been here ever since, often playing alongside his wife, oboist Lynda Jacquin, and enjoying every note. “All the arts are combined into opera,” he reminisced in a recent phone call. “It is supreme! Ballet, symphony, concerts are all wonderful in their own way, but when people leave the theater after the opera, they leave fulfilled. It has been my honor to be with the opera company for all these years.”
GAZES: Schoenberg the Artist........... 8
We recognize and thank Don Bravo for his many years of dedication and artistry, and wish him all the best in his next act!
Spotlight On: Annie Rabbat, BLO Concertmaster.......................16
BLO LOVE Congratulations are in order! Brett Hodgdon, BLO Chorusmaster and alumnus of the inaugural 2012 class of Jane & Steven Akin Emerging Artists, and Andrew Eggert, stage director, are recently engaged. Brett and Andrew met during rehearsals for BLO’s 2011 production of Macbeth, for which Brett served as rehearsal coach/pianist and Andrew as assistant director, and the Company has welcomed them both back many times over the years. Best wishes to the happy couple, and glad to say it all began at BLO! From top, Schoenberg collage by Media & Projections Designer Peter Torpey; Don Bravo; and from left, Andrew Eggert & Brett Hodgdon.
Sneak Peek: The Barber of Seville..............10 The Factotums of the City: Rosina and Figaro in The Barber of Seville..............12 Arnold Schoenberg: His Life and Times.................14
Contributors..........................19 Curtains................................ 20
On our cover: Collage includes: a piano arrangement of overture to The Barber of Seville (IMSLP, Petrucci Music Library); the opening of Schoenberg’s Klavierstucke, Op. 11, No. 1 (Kostka & Payne).
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VOCAL ACROBATICS & MUSICAL WIT: A HISTORY OF THE BARBER OF SEVILLE BY LAURA STANFIELD PRICHARD
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ighter and more quirky than Mozart’s masterpiece, The Barber of Seville— Rossini’s classic opera buffa—revolves around stock characters taken from commedia dell’arte, which developed from comic entertainments by medieval musicians (minstrels, troubadours, trouvères, and minnesingers). In 16th-century Italy, these groups evolved into more elaborate traveling companies, presenting commedia dell’arte plays with distinctive masks or hats and stock characters such as wily servants (Arlecchino/Harlequin), old men (Il Dottore and Pantalone), and young lovers (Lindoro and Rosina).
By the second half of the 17th century, comic interludes were introduced between the acts of a serious Italian opera. These intermezzi also relied on the archetypal characters of commedia dell’arte; and out of this mixture, Italian opera buffa evolved to become a dominant dramatic form in the 18th century. With the dawn of Enlightenment philosophies such as Universal Humanism in the mid1700s, the rising middle class began to support the arts and expect to see their concerns on stage. Opera buffa outsold most traditional musical forms due to its relevance, charm, daring political satire, and accessibility. At the age of 85, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi praised Rossini’s Barber for its “abundance of ideas, comic verve and truth of declamation,” calling it “the most beautiful opera buffa in existence.”
FRENCH WIT
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) made his name as a playwright with three semi-autobiographical plays revolving around Figaro, the clever servant of an aristocratic Spanish household. Seville was a favorite “exotic” locale for opera of the time (think of Don Giovanni, Fidelio, and even the later Carmen), and Beaumarchais had spent more than a year in Madrid looking for business opportunities with the new Spanish colony of Louisiana, from 1764-65, so he was at least familiar with Spanish music, language, and culture. Masques et bouffons; comédie italienne, 1862, Maurice Sand, Robarts Library - University of Toronto and BLO’s Barber costume design by designer Gianluca Falaschi. 2 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
In the story, both Beaumarchais and Rossini’s librettist Cesare Sterbini introduce us to Figaro, a barber (baritone), Bartolo, a doctor (bass), his beautiful ward Rosina (mezzo-soprano), Basilio, a music teacher (bass), and Almaviva (tenor), a nobleman attracted to Rosina. The character of Figaro was inspired by the commedia dell’arte figure of Brighella, a zanni/servant and the smarter older brother of Arlecchino; his name may have been an Italianization of “fils Caron” (Caron being the given surname of the playwright). Combining stock comedy characters, farce, and romantic comedy, the story of The Barber of Seville is a whirlwind of secret letters, false identities, quick costume changes, and last-minute escapes from tricky situations. Le Barbier de Séville (1772) was originally designed as a French opera libretto, but upon being rejected by the Comédie-Italienne, Beaumarchais rewrote it as a comic play (1773). It premiered with the Comédie-Française in the 400-seat theater of the Tuileries Palace in early 1775, with songs and incidental music provided by the leading violinist of the Tuileries Theater, Antoine-Laurent Baudron. Mozart, who attended the play in 1778, wrote an extended piano treatment of one of Baudron’s songs entitled 12 Variations on the Romance “Je suis Lindor,” K. 354/299a. Barber’s sequel, The Marriage of Figaro (1784), was Beaumarchais’ second Figaro play; Mozart’s famous version premiered less than two years later in Vienna. Many French writers stepped up provide more sequels, but Beaumarchais himself returned to his Figaro after several tumultuous years as a watchmaker, a royal music teacher, a spy, a horticulturist, and a series of tragedies that left him a childless widower. In his final Figaro play, La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother, 1797), we find the Almaviva family in turmoil once again: Countess Rosina has concealed her son’s true father (Cherubino!) from Almaviva, and is blackmailed by a Tartuffe-like figure. Figaro and his wife Suzanne come to the rescue, but Beaumarchais’ final play became his most serious, sentimental, and dramatic.
ITALIAN LYRICISM
Both Beaumarchais and Rossini were known for their quick wit and flexibility. By the time the 23-year-old Rossini was commissioned to compose his own version, all three of Beaumarchais’ plays were widely known through translations and adaptions. Giovanni Paisiello’s 1782 version of The Barber of Seville was the most successful, and Rossini was careful to publish several disclaimers establishing his respect for the older master and his intent to take the story in a new direction. He signed the commissioning contract on December 15, 1815, and agreed to title his project “Almaviva,” after Figaro’s employer. Some sources support the theory that he wrote the whole opera in two weeks, and it opened two months later at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The February 20, 1816 premiere was plagued with legendary snafus: a cat onstage, no producer (he had died suddenly two weeks before), aggressive Paisiello supporters heckling
Portrait of Gioacchino Rossini in 1820, International Museum and Library of Music, Bologna.
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hose who enjoy reading about Rossini’s life and the roots of Romantic opera may enjoy the following new publications: Hugh Thomas’ fascinating Beaumarchais in Seville (Yale, 2006), Kenneth Hamilton’s discussion of early nineteenthcentury audience behavior and performance style (After the Golden Age, Oxford, 2007), Richard Osborn’s scholarly Rossini: His Life and Works (Oxford, 2007), and a recent paperback reprint of Stendhal’s Memoirs of Rossini (1824), detailing the first half of his operatic career (Grigson, 2014).
throughout, and Don Basilio attempting to sing with a handkerchief over his bleeding nose after falling onstage. But from the second performance on, it was a complete success. By that summer, Paisiello had passed away, and Rossini dared to rename the work The Barber of Seville. It is a veritable tour de force of vocal acrobatics, musical wit, and comedy. Beginning with a spirited overture, Rossini’s approach contrasts upbeat humor with poignant musical touches. Opera buffa encourages stylistic contrast, such as highly rhythmic, staccato passages (as in Rosina’s virtuosic, coquettish “Una voce poco fa”), long, lyrical melody (Almaviva’s seductive “Ecco ridente”), quick stretto (quick dialogue such as Almaviva’s and Bartolo’s exchange “Pace, gioia”), and a hilariously stuttered “stupefaction ensemble” (“Fredda ed immobile”). Comic patter songs for buffo basses abound in Rossini’s early works, ranging here from Basilio’s warning against gossip (“La calunnia”) and Bartolo’s pompous “A un dottore delle mia sorte” to Figaro’s bubbly self-absorption in “Largo al factotum.” Rossini mastered the opera buffa by peppering each act with duets and trios and capping each act’s finale with a sophisticated ensemble (à la Mozart). By utilizing the satirical opera buffa genre, Rossini could transform characters from the still-popular commedia dell’arte through musical elegance and refinement, CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 3
WHO’S WHO MATTHEW WORTH AS FIGARO | DANIELA MACK AS ROSINA JESUS GARCIA AS COUNT ALMAVIVA David Crawford as Basilio & Steven Condy as Bartolo Conducted by David Angus & directed by Rosetta Cucchi, Scenic Design by Julia Noulin-Mérat, Costume Design by Gianluca Falaschi, Lighting Design by D.M. Wood
HIGH FIVE:
Get to Know Barber in 5 Minutes or Less THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Music by Gioacchino Rossini Libretto by Cesare Sterbini Sung in Italian with English surtitles Length: Approximately 3 hours, including 1 intermission
SUPER-SHORT SYNOPSIS
The Count Almaviva is smitten with Rosina, the beautiful ward of old Dr. Bartolo, who intends to marry her. Figaro, barber extraordinaire, offers to help Almaviva win her heart. The Count tells Rosina that he is “Lindoro,” a humble student. Figaro suggests that Almaviva disguise himself as a soldier in order to gain access to Dr. Bartolo’s house. The enamored Rosina writes a letter to “Lindoro” and vows to be with the man she loves. Basilio, her music teacher, warns Dr. Bartolo about the Count, and Bartolo decides to speed up his own marriage to Rosina. Almaviva arrives disguised as a drunken soldier but is refused entry—although he manages to slip Rosina a love note. Almaviva narrowly avoids arrest in the resulting confusion. Later that day, Almaviva disguises himself as “Don Alonso,” a substitute music teacher, and the lovers plot their elopement during Rosina’s singing lesson. Figaro distracts Bartolo with a shave, but finally Bartolo get suspicious and throws everyone out.
phrasing, and florid, highly ornamented passages and vocal fireworks. The definition of bel canto is somewhat open to interpretation, but many bel canto operas remain popular today, including Norma (with its famous soprano aria, “Casta diva”), La Fille du Régiment (Pavarotti nailed the tenor aria’s series of high C’s to wild acclaim), and Lucia di Lammermoor (with its tour de force mad scene for a murderous soprano).
ROSSINI BELLINI, ANYONE?
After an explosively successful career, Rossini officially retired in 1829 when he was only in his late 30s. The majority of his later years were spent in Paris, where he fully indulged his reputation as a food connoisseur and excellent amateur chef. There are dozens of recipes “alla Rossini”—probably the most famous is Tournedos Rossini (filet mignon served on toasted bread and topped with foie gras and truffles). In the mood for a beverage before the opera? The Rossini Bellini: Mix 16 halved strawberries with two tablespoons sugar and allow to macerate for about an hour. Blend the strawberries, put a couple of tablespoons of the purée in the bottom of each glass, and top with Prosecco. (San Francisco Classical Voice’s instructions.)
Photo collage with Rossini, photographed by Étienne Carjat in 1865, during his years in Paris.
Now, Bartolo is determined to marry Rosina that very night. He convinces Rosina that Lindoro is plotting with the Count to seduce her. Heartbroken, she agrees to marry Bartolo.
BEL CANTO The Barber of Seville is an exemplar of bel canto, a style of singing that originated in Italy, developed during the Baroque era, and peaked during the first part of the 19th century. Translated literally as “beautiful singing,” the bel canto tradition is marked by a beautiful, even tone throughout the voice, legato (smooth) 4 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
HARVARD ART MUSEUMS COLLECTION AND MOCKINGJAY3190
That night, Figaro and Almaviva steal into Rosina’s room. She accuses them of betrayal, but finally Almaviva reveals his true identity. Bartolo and a group of soldiers aren’t far behind—can Figaro’s quick wits win the day for love?
FLORENCE HOMOLKA, SCHOENBERG ARCHIVES AT USC.
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG AND THE EXILE EXPERIENCE
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rnold Schoenberg juggled multiple national and religious identities during his long creative life: Austrian, German, Jewish, Protestant, American. Born into a Jewish family in 1874 in Vienna, capital of the diverse Austro-Hungarian Empire, he died as an American citizen in Los Angeles in 1951. Although his native language was German, he never possessed either Austrian or German citizenship. He disliked Vienna, the city with which he is most strongly associated, and lived for long periods in Berlin. When the country of his birth dissolved in 1918 at the end of World War I, he became in a real way stateless. The Schoenberg Music Building at the University of California, Los Angeles. Inset, Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles, believed to be taken in 1948.
As a young man Schoenberg rejected the Jewish faith and became a Lutheran, then returned to Judaism as an adult. Fleeing the Nazis, he sought refuge in the United States in 1933, settling in California in 1934. So attached did he become to his new home that he and his family decided not to return to Austria or Germany after the fall of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II. And yet, he chose to be buried in the Central Cemetery in Vienna, near Beethoven and other great men of Austro-German music. Through all these dizzying geographic and personal dislocations and re-identifications, however, Schoenberg retained his single most important identity: as a composer. Negotiating these shifts
BY HARLOW ROBINSON
became simply a way of life. Wherever he was, music always came first. It was the touchstone that he clung to and that defined his existence. The last and arguably happiest period of his life Schoenberg spent in Los Angeles, where he left a lasting imprint on the musical and cultural community—and where he was given the economic and personal freedom to pursue his art. On the evergreen grounds of the University of California, Los Angeles, below palm-lined Sunset Boulevard, the music school’s main building and library both bear his name. Inside the library, the composer’s bust stares at the students gathered in the reading room. The weathered chalkboard Schoenberg used in his classes still hangs in the office of one of the faculty members. Herr Dr. Prof. Schoenberg taught at UCLA for eight years, from 1936 to 1944. The composer’s first stop when he arrived in the U.S. in October 1933 was Boston, where he was briefly employed by the Malkin Conservatory, but the cold climate worsened his asthma; he quickly departed. For him, California was “the most beautiful point on the earth.” In a speech delivered in LA in October of 1934, in his still German-flavored English, he gave thanks. “I came from the one country into another country where neither dust nor better food is rationed and where I am allowed to go on my feet, where my head BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 5
UCLA
“DRIVEN INTO THE PARADISE”
can be erect, where kindness and cheerfulness is dominating and where to live is a joy, where to be an expatriate of another country is the grace of God. I was driven into the paradise!” But like many other creative artists who sought refuge in Southern California from the political disaster unfolding in Europe in the 1930s, Schoenberg found that the life of an exile had its challenges. When he arrived, he was already a man of 60. Adapting to a radically different language, climate and culture at that age took considerable patience and effort. It helped, of course, that his huge reputation as one of the most important figures in the recent history of German music preceded him. It opened doors to the rich and powerful of what was a booming metropolis and the center of golden-age Hollywood film industry. It helped, too, that the great movie studios had been mostly founded by an earlier wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe, men whose parents had escaped anti-Semitism in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. (Several studios approached Schoenberg to write film scores, but he never produced one.)
FELLOW ÉMIGRÉS
Schoenberg joined a growing group of exiled composers, writers, actors and directors (many of them German-speaking) who viewed him with respect and admiration—and a certain degree of awe. One of the first important cultural figures to seek asylum from Nazi terror in the United States, many others followed his example in the coming years. By the early 1940s, Los Angeles could rightfully be called “the music capital of the world.” Residing there were the Russians Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jascha Heifetz and Vladimir Horowitz; the Hungarian Miklos Rozsa; and the Austro-Germans Erich Korngold, Ernst Toch and Ernst Krenek, among others. Besides them, the major German writers Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno settled either temporarily or permanently in Los Angeles. Defining and developing his identity in the midst of this diverse émigré community and in the wider American “melting pot” tested Schoenberg’s outsized ego and made him question his place in the world. In her insightful study Schoenberg’s New World: The American Years, musicologist Sabine Feisst suggests that the composer’s status gradually changed during his 18 years in the United States from “refugee” to “exile” to “immigrant.” This did not mean, of course, that Schoenberg completely abandoned his previous Austro-German identity, or that he embraced all aspects of American life. Although he enjoyed many external features of the American dream, living in a Spanish colonial home in the upscale environs of Brentwood Park, with Shirley Temple and Cole Porter as neighbors, he also remained an outsider who scrupulously maintained many rituals of the European life he and his wife had left behind. The Israeli sociologist Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt has also asserted that Schoenberg’s Jewish consciousness deepened while he lived in the United States, because here “a Jew could be, or at least aspire to be, accepted as part of the American collectivity without giving up some type of Jewish collective identity and activities.” Kevin Starr, the dean of California historians, has written that Schoenberg never really managed (or rather, tried) to assimilate. “Despite his long residence in LA, from 1934 to 1951…Schoenberg remained a figure so detached, so alienated, as to seem not to exist in Los Angeles at all, or at the least, not to derive much satisfaction from his life there.”
Just a few of Schoenberg’s illustrious fellow émigrés in Los Angeles, many of whom were also composers and artists. Clockwise, from left: Composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division); composer Igor Stravinsky (George Grantham Bain Collection); playwright Bertolt Brecht (German Federal Archives); and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division).
But this seems a one-sided assessment. True, Schoenberg continued to speak German with his wife, and preferred to socialize with other German-speaking émigrés. Their somewhat insular world gained the humorous nickname of “Weimar on the Pacific.” Among themselves, these displaced composers, performers, writers, playwrights, film directors, actors and architects often indulged in romantic memories of their lost European existence. They even coined a witty term for this collective act of nostalgia: “bei-uns-ki,” from the German phrase “bei uns daheim war alles besser”—“Back home in Europe CONTINUED ON PAGE 19
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WHO’S WHO OMAR EBRAHIM AS SCHOENBERG SARA WOMBLE AS GIRL | JESSE DARDEN AS BOY Conducted by David Angus & directed by Karole Armitage, with original production concept by Braham Murray. Scenic Design by Simon Higlett, Costume Design by Nancy Leary, Lighting Design by Pablo Santiago, Media & Projection Design by Peter Torpey, Sound Design by Ben Bloomberg
HIGH FIVE:
Get to Know Schoenberg in 5 Minutes or Less SCHOENBERG IN HOLLYWOOD An Opera by Tod Machover Music by Tod Machover Libretto by Simon Robson Based on a Scenario by Braham Murray Commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera Sung in English with English surtitles Length: Approximately 90 minutes
THE STORY: AN OVERVIEW
It is 1935. Arnold Schoenberg has escaped the horror of Nazi Germany. The great innovator and self-proclaimed torch-bearer of German music now finds himself a refugee amongst the palm trees of California, playing tennis and teaching music composition at UCLA. “Once upon a time,” he muses, “the future was me. Now…it is annihilation.” How will the exiled artist move forward? Arnold has accepted an invitation to meet wunderkind MGM producer Irving Thalberg with a view to writing music for the burgeoning film industry. “Find new audiences; find new friends,” Thalberg counsels. This young Mephistopheles offers the modernist the mass audience he had been denied: “We can tell every man’s story,” says the glamorous, ambitious spokesman for the new, universal Art of cinema. Troubled and tempted all at once, Arnold returns to his students. “I could play to a million people. And yet…who am I?” Before he can look forward, he must look back. Unable to resist the thought-experiment, he engages with his own, innate musical playfulness: “What if?” he asks. What would the story of his life be, told in the new language of music and movies? “Play!” he tells his students. “We will do it together,” they sing. So, aided by his loyal students, he begins an imaginary odyssey through his past—seeing the events of his own life as if told through the medium of film. Adapted from the synopsis by librettist Simon Robson.
Tenor Omar Ebrahim as Arnold Schoenberg. Media & Projections Designer Peter Torpey.
AN EXPLORATION OF FILM
Alongside its exploration of Schoenberg’s identity and biography, Schoenberg in Hollywood is equally a study in film genres and history. The opera is structured as an imaginative series of episodes from Schoenberg’s life, and each “chapter” takes on a different film genre and aesthetic, which help to emphasize the themes and content. For example, Schoenberg’s bitter confrontation with his unfaithful wife and her lover is conveyed with elements of film noir and Humphrey Bogart; when Schoenberg and Gertrud move to California, we are suddenly in the world of Old Western film classics, complete with allusions to their famous soundtracks. Look out (and listen up) for references to the Marx brothers, Disney, romantic movies, and more.
ABOUT THE WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTION
• I t’s fitting that an opera with so many film elements will have its premiere in the Emerson Paramount Center on the Robert J. Orchard Stage, which originally opened as a 1930s Art Deco movie house. It was restored by Emerson College and reopened in 2010. BLO last performed there in 2016 with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera, Greek. •T od Machover, composer of Schoenberg in Hollywood, is a world-renowned composer as well as the Academic Head of the MIT Media Lab. The popular video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero developed out of his Lab, and he was a 2012 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his “robotic opera” Death and the Powers. BLO performed Machover’s opera Resurrection in 2001 at the Shubert Theatre. •S choenberg suffered from triskaidekaphobia, a fear of the number 13. He was warned by an astrologer as he neared the age of 76 (7+6=13), and in fact he died on July 13, 1951—a few months before his 77th birthday. BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 7
SCHOENBERG THE ARTIST BY JOHN CONKLIN
THE RED GAZE
SELF-PORTRAIT
Painted by Schoenberg in 1910 as part of a series that he called “Gazes”, this has become a familiar icon of the deeply troubled, apprehensive gestalt of Europe on the eve of the catastrophe of WWI. The eyes—terrified, frozen, and helpless in the grip of apocalyptic panic—seem to gaze even beyond, further to the horrors that followed and engulfed the 20th century (along with Schoenberg himself) in their almost unimaginable chaos.
This work (painted in the same year as THE RED GAZE) was part of a number of deeply revelatory and probing selfportraits painted by Schoenberg. He painted over the course of his long life, but the majority of his work stems from the years before 1912. His paintings were shown in a small one-man show in Vienna in 1910 and again later in a group show, alongside works by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Egon Schiele. Completely self-taught, Schoenberg’s paintings have been dismissed as crude or amateurish, but to many they are completely compelling and disturbing in their raw honesty and conceptual boldness—much, in the end, like his music.
SCHOENBERG by Richard Gerstl
Gerstl, a rebellious, neurotic painter, became a friend and neighbor to Schoenberg and his wife, Mathilde. As Schoenberg became increasingly selfinvolved and obsessive in his own search for artistic fulfillment, she turned to Gerstl, eventually deserting Schoenberg and their child. She was reluctantly persuaded to return, and Gerstl subsequently committed a gruesomely melodramatic suicide, after destroying most of his canvasses. In the midst of these traumatic emotional upheavals, Schoenberg continued to paint and began to evolve his revolutionary style…works of torment, fracture, and deep beauty that discarded and rejected the tonal certainties of traditional harmony. Here, in Gerstl’s portrait from 1906, Schoenberg sits like a sphinx or an idol… impassive, brooding, almost disembodied, ensconced in his suit and tie amidst the comfortable, outmoded, and useless bourgeois patterns of wallpaper and Oriental carpet.
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Schoenberg flourished in the rich soil of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century…a loam full of nutrients such as Freud, Mahler, Schnitzler, but also deeply laced with the toxic wastes of anti-Semitism, virulent nationalism, and rabid conservatism. Surrounded by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka, the young composer even seriously considered a career as a painter. This aspect of a protean talent (he was also a renowned teacher, critic, and an important writer on music theory) opens new and revelatory insights into the complexities of this iconic creator.
IMPRESSION III – CONCERT by Wassily Kandinsky
In January of 1911, Kandinsky heard Schoenberg’s music for the first time and sent him an enthusiastic letter: “What we are striving for and our whole manner of thought and feeling have so much in common that I feel completely justified in expressing my empathy. In your works you have realized what I … have for so greatly longed for in music.” After the concert, Kandinsky set to work on a painting of it: IMPRESSION III – CONCERT. Here, Kandinsky begins his own journey into abstraction…we can recognize the audience leaning in to listen, the black slab of the piano, but all is subsumed into a picture not of an event but of an experience. In much the same way, Schoenberg began to see how he could, and how he must, leave the traditional ways of Western musical representation behind and forge a new aesthetic, a new way of hearing, a plunge into hitherto unexplored depths of the soul.
PORTRAIT OF SCHOENBERG, Man Ray (1927) The Gaze “ The immensities behind his eyes.” - S. N. Behrman “ His too sensitive face, difficult to look into…and impossible not to look into.” - Robert Craft “ When Schoenberg looked at you, you disappeared.” - Igor Stravinsky
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SNEAK PEEK:
THE NEW PRODUCTION OF THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
T
he visual world of the new BLO production is inspired in part by the whimsical artwork of M.C. Escher. Born in the Netherlands, Escher lived in Italy for about twelve years and also traveled in Spain, where he was especially impacted by the geometrical decorations of the Alhambra, a 14th-century fortress. Escher is well-known for his artistic explorations of symmetry, tessellations, impossible objects and spaces, and perspective. One of his most famous works is a fantastical depiction of staircases that lead in every direction, entitled Relativity—beautifully echoed in the imaginative set by designer Julia NoulinMérat, rendered below. Recognizing that Barber is, after all, a game of love, disguises, and matchmaking, costume designer Gianluca Falaschi also incorporates patterns and elements drawn from games and play into lavish, exaggerated historical clothing. Be ready for an elegant blend of the modern and the period, as well as details galore, in the new production!
Set design rendering for The Barber of Seville by designer Julia Noulin-Mérat. An example of the tessellated patterns of the Alhambra, which later helped to inspire Escher’s work. Costume designs (left page) by Gianluca Falaschi. BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 11
THE FACTOTUMS OF THE CITY:
ROSINA & FIGARO IN THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
Strolling through the streets of the city as he flits about from house to house and job to job, Figaro, the title character of The Barber of Seville, enjoys a freewheeling lifestyle limited only by his own imagination. The circumstances of Rosina, the opera’s principal female character, could hardly be more different. Her movements are restricted to the house of Doctor Bartolo, her guardian, and she fears that she may be trapped there forever, as Bartolo intends to marry her. But when Figaro learns that his friend Count Almaviva is smitten with Rosina, he devises a plan to bring them together, and at first it seems to work brilliantly. The nobleman disguises himself as a poor student named Lindoro to ensure that Rosina loves him for who he truly is, not for his title. She reciprocates his feelings and proclaims that “Lindoro shall be mine.” What could go wrong? Plenty, it turns out, and the ensuing hijinks—disguises, distractions, furtive professions of love, a major misunderstanding—unfold one after another, keeping the lovers’ fate uncertain until the opera’s final moments. Yet that uncertainty never feels overly worrisome, thanks to Barber’s plentiful humor and lighthearted plot. Rossini’s effervescent musical style, in which exuberantly virtuosic melodies glide above an elegant, agile orchestra, welcomes listeners into a world of wit, energy, and sparkle. Together, these musical and dramatic qualities contribute to Barber’s standing as an exemplar of opera buffa and as one of the most popular operas ever written. The piece is a perpetual favorite not only in opera houses around the world but also in popular culture, invoked and parodied in cartoons, sitcoms, and films. In short, even if you haven’t previously attended a performance of Barber, you’ve surely heard bits and pieces of it before. A sense of familiarity would have informed the audience’s experience at the opera’s 1816 premiere as well. Barber is based on the first play of a trilogy by the eighteenth-century French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, a work that had previously been adapted by several other composers, most notably Giovanni Paisiello. Rossini also indulged his proclivity for recycling tunes, borrowing freely from his own past work. For instance, the music of “Una voce poco fa,” Rosina’s celebrated opening aria, had appeared in Rossini’s opera Elisabetta, about the Queen of England, just one year earlier. Operagoers then and now might also compare Barber to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (1786), as both were adapted from Beaumarchais’s trilogy and feature the same characters. Yet while Mozart’s opera engages central concerns of Enlightenmentera Europe via pointed social commentary, particularly its 12 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
skewering of aristocrats and deeply empathetic portrayals of servant characters, that subversive edge tends to be more muted in Barber. Accordingly, some have interpreted the opera as rejecting, or at least skirting the issue of, the social and political ideals expressed in Mozart’s work; it has become a commonplace to think of Barber as Figaro’s lighter, less lofty relative. But that comparison is somewhat misleading: Rossini’s goals were quite different from Mozart’s, and what makes Barber so beloved is not so much what the opera does as how the piece works. Put another way, Rossini doesn’t reinvent the conventions of Italian comic opera—its musical structures, characters, and plot devices—but he uses them more brilliantly than just about anybody else. Craft, virtuosity, and performance are the opera’s currency. These same qualities are vital to understanding both Figaro and Rosina. Despite their very different lives, both are impressively adaptable, and they excel at performing whatever role the circumstances might require. As the self-described “factotum” of Seville, Figaro is “ready for anything / by night or by day,” he boasts. The clever valet-turned-barber-turned-anything-youneed-him-to-be lives as virtuosically as he sings. Movement and flexibility are vital to his success: “Figaro here, Figaro there, Figaro up, Figaro down,” he sings with delight. So where does that leave Rosina? Like so many operatic women, she initially seems defined by her powerlessness. As a young, unmarried woman stuck in Bartolo’s clutches, she lacks the mobility afforded to Figaro and the opera’s many other male characters; even as the Count’s love for her sets the opera’s plot into motion, she stays motionless. For this reason, it might be easy to see her as a relatively simple character—either a naive ingénue or a manipulative vixen—who is present more as an
Sarah Coburn as Rosina and Jonathan Beyer as Figaro in BLO’s 2012 The Barber of Seville. Inset, Engraving of the Italian contralto Geltrude Righetti-Giorgi, circa 1820, Victoria and Albert Museum, Harry R. Beard Collection, given by Isobel Beard.
ERIC ANTONIOU
object of male desire than as a fully-fledged person. (Borrowing from contemporary parlance, we might note that this opera would never pass the Bechdel test: the characters are overwhelmingly male, and there is never a conversation among women that is not about a man.) Yet what Rosina lacks in physical mobility, she makes up for in emotional virtuosity. Her resourcefulness is abundant: whether she’s surreptitiously floating a letter down from the balcony or whispering to her lover while Bartolo dozes, she knows how to react instantaneously and cleverly, making the most of what she has. By necessity, she becomes a sort of emotional factotum, thinking on her feet and doing whatever the situation requires in order to achieve her goals. This is not to say that Rosina manages to break free from the confines of her particular situation, or from gendered social roles more broadly. In the final scenes of the opera, she reacts all too credulously when first Bartolo convinces her that “Lindoro” has deceived her, then rejoices uncritically when she finds out that Lindoro and the Count are one and the same. In the blink of an eye, she gets married and delights in her good fortune, the shenanigans of the past 24 hours seemingly forgotten. This sudden shift casts Rosina’s earlier actions in a different light;
perhaps her emotional savviness was not so much a sign of inherent rebelliousness as it was a means to a highly conventional end. Or perhaps the shift in her character has to do with Rossini’s adherence to the conventions of comic opera, namely the need to conclude Barber with a happy marriage regardless of what had previously transpired. Rebellious or not, Rosina remains a versatile and virtuosic character, rich with interpretive possibility. Like any great artist, who uses the limited space of the stage to construct an entire universe, she uses her wits and mental dexterity to maximum effect. In a world overflowing with performances both musical (the serenades outside her window, the music lesson in Act II) and social (the Count’s many disguises, Figaro’s outlandish schemes), she is the ultimate performer. And she knows it. As she famously states in “Una voce poco fa,” she contains multitudes: she may seem sweet and docile at first, but try her and she’ll transform into a viper, ready to fight. What’s impressive about her declaration is not only the fact of her expressive range, but also her confident self-knowledge. That quality is something that Rosina’s circumstances, no matter how restrictive, can never alter. Part of her will always be limitless. w
BY LUCY CAPLAN BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 13
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG:
HIS LIFE AND TIMES The World Premiere opera Schoenberg in Hollywood draws much inspiration from the events of Arnold Schoenberg’s life, as the opera confronts questions of identity, artistry, and meaning. To help you navigate the twists and turns of Schoenberg’s memory—and gain additional insight to the man himself—here’s a timeline of the epic (operatic, even) life and times of Arnold Schoenberg. 1874 | Arnold Schoenberg was born in Vienna to a middle-class Jewish family. His father had a shop that sold shoes; his mother was a piano teacher. Since Schoenberg’s father was a citizen of Bratislava, Slovakia, Arnold was technically never a German nor an Austrian citizen—a fact that further complicated his sense of national identity as an adult. The young Arnold began violin lessons at the age of eight, but was largely a self-taught musician. 1889 | Schoenberg’s father, Samuel, passed away suddenly on New Year’s Eve. The family needed income, so Arnold left school only two years later and began working at a bank, Privatbank Werner & Comp, which went bankrupt in 1895. After that, Schoenberg was able to make a living primarily by orchestrating operettas. 1896 | For the first time, one of Schoenberg’s compositions was performed in a public concert, with the Musikalische Verein Polyhymnia orchestra. 1898 | Schoenberg converted to the Lutheran faith. 14 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
1901 | Schoenberg married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of composer Alexander Zemlinsky who was also Schoenberg’s counterpoint teacher. The couple went on to have two children, Gertrud and Georg. 1908 | For several months that summer, Mathilde left Schoenberg for Richard Gerstl, a painter with whom both Schoenbergs had been studying (Schoenberg was a talented painter—see more on page 8). During her absence, Schoenberg composed “You lean against a silver willow,” the first of his compositions to move away completely from traditional tonality. Mathilde eventually returned to the family. Gerstl committed suicide in November of that year. 1910 | Schoenberg wrote his Theory of Harmony, a music theory book which remains influential to this day. Meanwhile during this period, he continued to explore atonality, composing Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 (1909) and Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912). 1913 | In an episode indicative of the public reception to his works during this time, on March 31, 1913, Schoenberg conducted a concert featuring Webern, Zemlinsky, Berg, and his own composition with the Vienna Concert Society. The audience, shocked by the experimentalism of the Second Viennese School (as Schoenberg and his pupils and associates came to be known), rioted and the concert ended early. At least one punch was
thrown, resulting in a lawsuit—the operetta composer Oscar Strauss testified in the resulting trial that the punch was the most harmonious sound of the entire evening. 1916–17 | Schoenberg served a brief stint in the army during World War I, interrupting most of his compositions from this time. 1921–23 | Schoenberg continued to develop the twelve tone method of composition, also known as serialism, and composed his first piece is this style, Piano Suite, Op. 25. 1923 | Mathilde Schoenberg died. Schoenberg remarried the following year, to Gertrud Kolisch. He and Gertrud went on to have three children, Dorothea Nuria, Ronald, and Lawrence. 1926–1933 | Schoenberg served as Director of a Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. He also composed a number of important works during this period, including Third String Quartet, Op. 30 (1927); Von Heute auf Morgen, Op. 32 (1928-1929, with a libretto written by his wife, Gertrud, under the pseudonym Max Blonda); and Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, Op. 34 (1929-1930). Toward the end of this period, he began work on an opera, Moses und Aron, which he never finished. 1933 | The Nazis came to power, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. While vacationing in France, Schoenberg lost his job (since he had been born Jewish) and the family decided not to return to Germany. He re-converted to Judaism in a Paris synagogue. After first trying to gain entrance to Great Britain, the Schoenbergs moved to the United States. He took a post at the Malkin Conservatory in Boston. 1934 | Citing the cold weather and health concerns, the Schoenbergs headed west to California. 1936 | After teaching at both the University of California, Los Angeles and at University of Southern California, Schoenberg became a full professor at UCLA, a position he would hold through 1944. Learn more about this period of Schoenberg’s life on page 5. 1941 | Schoenberg became a citizen of the United States. 1947 | Schoenberg composed a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust, entitled A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46. Other notable works from his later period include Violin Concerto, Op. 36 (1934/36); Kol Nidre, Op. 39 (1938); Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Op. 41 (1942); and Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942). 1951 | After feeling sick and depressed for several days, Schoenberg passed away after a heart attack on July 13. 1974 | According to the composer’s wishes, his remains were interred in the Vienna Central Cemetery, alongside composers such as Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787), Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), Franz Schubert (1797–1828), Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), and many more luminaries from the world of music and beyond. w
Left, “Schönberg Family” (detail) by Richard Gerstl, painted during the summer of 1908—shortly before Gerstl’s affair with Mathilde was discovered. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria. Above, from top: Composer Arnold Schönberg in Payerbach, 1903, unknown Austrian photographer. Arnold Schoenberg, painted in 1917 by Egon Schiele. Grave of Arnold Schoenberg, composer, Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery), Vienna, Austria. Photographed 2005. A 2017 photo of a road named for Schoenberg in Benrath, a section of the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 15
SPOTLIGHT ON:
ANNIE RABBAT, BLO CONCERTMASTER BY LACEY UPTON
This summer, we caught up with Annie Rabbat, violinist and the incoming concertmaster of the BLO orchestra. Annie has been a member of the BLO orchestra since 2012 (her first BLO production was John Musto’s The Inspector), playing Principal Second Violin. She is also a founding member of Boston’s innovative, self-conducted string orchestra, A Far Cry. Boston Lyric Opera: How did you start playing violin? Annie Rabbat: It’s kind of a fun story! My father, who’s originally from Egypt and spoke Arabic and French at home, immigrated to Canada for his Ph.D. He landed a job in Chicago, and part of his responsibilities would be to go around the country giving lectures. To further hone his English public speaking skills, he joined Toastmasters, and someone else in the club gave a speech about their child’s Suzuki violin program. My parents had both grown up listening to classical music and when they discovered the school was in their home town, they started my older brother on violin. Being his little sister, I wanted whatever he had! I also loved to sing along with my mom before I could even speak, so they decided I could give the violin a go. I started playing when I was three and a half. BLO: And never stopped! AR: No! There have been other things I found interesting over the years, but I never stopped. BLO: What’s the role of the concertmaster, and why is that important in the orchestra? AR: The concertmaster is the principal player of the violin section, which often has the melodies and is sometimes more exposed, so the audience can often hear it more clearly. The concertmaster also serves as a liaison between the orchestra and the conductor. I help David Angus translate his musical vision of the opera into the bowings on the page and some of the concrete aspects of playing a string instrument. Coming from a chamber orchestra background, I think that it’s equally important that the concertmaster listen in a way that helps the string players blend with the winds, brass and singers. In other words, there’s give and take. 16 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
BLO: And how is working with David Angus? AR: David is great! He has a deep commitment to the music and the musicians. As a conductor, he’s crystal clear on the podium. He knows what he’s looking for and comes to rehearsal with a clear interpretation and a solid plan. He’s kind, flexible and has a sense of humor, all of which you need to run such a large ship. He has the respect of the Boston musicians and I’m always excited to work with him. BLO: What was the audition process like for the concertmaster position? AR: It involved a lot of practicing, obviously, but also studying the scores, the libretto, giving myself mock auditions, playing fake auditions for colleagues.... I think an audition is a lot like taking a photograph: it could turn out great, or not so great. For me, the ability to prepare strategically gives any of us performing artists the best chance to shine when the pressure is on. For this position, the first and second rounds of auditions were both blind auditions, meaning that a screen is set up in between the panel of adjudicators and the candidate, which levels the playing field and helps to prevent any unintended bias. Then there was a third and final round before the panel deliberated and made their decision for the concertmaster position. BLO: Do you still get nervous about auditions? AR: Oh, absolutely! I knew that I would see a lot of colleagues that I like personally and I admire artistically, and somehow you have to put that out of your mind and be in the moment. BLO: What is it about opera that you enjoy playing? AR: The drama, the expressivity, the full array of the human experience. There are moments of whimsy and playfulness, and also sublimely beautiful music. It’s fun to be part of an art form that has so many facets. Photos by Alistair Muir for English National Opera.
- ANNIE RABBAT
BLO: And you also play a lot of chamber music—so what is it about these two very different genres that are appealing for you? AR: I love the variety of playing in two totally different ensembles. There’s something really satisfying about inhabiting both worlds, and the experiences in one can really enrich my time with the other. A Far Cry recently played a little Rossini piece, and six years of opera with BLO helped me understand Rossini’s language, which is steeped in the opera tradition, even if it’s a small work for strings. BLO: So with an ensemble that small, how does A Far Cry choose the repertoire and the artistic direction of the orchestra? AR: We make these decisions as a collective since all 18 of us are Co-Artistic Directors. Our process morphs a bit from year to year, but in essence any of us can propose a program to the group, and sometimes we brainstorm programs together as well. We start each season with a retreat where we get a programming process started, and we finalize the season’s repertoire at our winter retreat. There’s usually some passionate debate along the way about which programs should “make the cut,” because we recognize that it’s a privilege to curate a program on our Boston season.
The BLO Orchestra led by Maestro David Angus during the 2016 production of Carmen, for which Ms. Rabbat played the violin solos.
BLO: Do you have any favorite BLO moments, or operas? AR: That’s like asking which of your kids is your favorite…[laughs]. I love all the Mozart operas we’ve done. The music is gorgeous and witty, and the second violin parts I’ve led are in many ways the driving heart of the rhythmic impulse and can be devilishly fast and virtuosic. I also really enjoyed Philip Glass’ In the Penal Colony—it’s dark, brooding, and very much the other end of the spectrum. BLO: What are you excited for in this Season? AR: I’m excited about each of the operas, but for different reasons. I’m particularly looking forward to the Rossini with its hilarious story and bubbly and charming music. I’ve actually played one of Tod Machover’s other operas, Death and the Powers, so it’ll be exciting to hear that composer’s voice in a new work. Britten has written some masterpieces for chamber orchestra that I’ve gotten to know really well, so the [The Rape of Lucretia] will feel like sitting down with an old friend. Finally, I don’t yet know The Handmaid’s Tale or Ruders’ work, so that will be a completely new exploration. It’s a varied Season in so many ways, and I think the BLO audiences are in for a treat! w BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 17
LIZA VOLL PHOTOGRAPHY
“ THERE ARE MOMENTS OF WHIMSY AND PLAYFULNESS, AND ALSO SUBLIMELY BEAUTIFUL MUSIC. IT’S FUN TO BE PART OF AN ART FORM THAT HAS SO MANY FACETS.”
“...ACROBATICS & WIT” FROM PAGE 3
eschewing the vulgarity of the earlier traveling entertainment. Barber’s story celebrates the lower classes, democratizing opera through sophisticated showpieces for scheming servants and deceptive suitors. Composers, librettists, actors, and singers could vent their frustrations by mocking the complex love intrigues of the upper class and laying bare the social injustices of their time.
THE YOUNG ROSSINI
Rossini’s first years were spent traveling from one small Italian opera house to another. His mother was a singer, his father played orchestral horn, and he was apprenticed to players of violin, viola, horn, and harpsichord. Eventually, the family settled in Bologna, where the 12-year-old budding composer earned pocket money singing in churches and accompanying opera companies. He studied cello and composition at the Bologna Conservatory during his teens, winning a gold medal and completing a commissioned cantata. At this age, he was utterly devoted to Mozart, earning the nickname “Il Tedeschino” (The Little German): he always regretted not being able to continue past four years of formal study due to financial problems. At the age of 19, his one-act comedy The Marriage Contract (1810) was a success in Venice, and parts of the score reappeared in his full-length La Pietra del Paragone (1812), performed over 50 times during its first season. He became an established, soughtafter composer during this decade, sometimes completing four to five operas per season; big hits from these early years include Tancredi (La Fenice, 1813, with its overture from Le Pietra), The Italian Girl in Algiers (Teatro San Benedetto, Venice, 1813), and The Turk in Italy (La Scala, 1814). Following typical practice of the time, Rossini borrowed liberally from his own compositions. The Barber of Seville (Rome, 1816) displays three examples of the young composer repurposing his earlier ideas: its Overture was first composed for Aureliano in Palmira (1813), then modified for Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (1815); the opening chorus comes from Act II of his Sigismondo (1814); and the second half of Rosina’s “Una voce poco fa” had appeared in both Aureliano and Elisabetta. As Rossini’s gift for melody grew, he developed now-famous melodies for Barber from earlier fragments: Almaviva’s aria (“Ecco ridente in cielo”) began as a chorus of priests in Aureliano; Basilio’s complaint to Rosina (“La calunnia”) improved on duet fragments from Aureliano and Sigismondo; and Bartolo’s “A un dottor” combines a brilliant new vocal melody with an earlier orchestral accompaniment from Rossini’s one-act opera, Il Signor Bruschino (1813). Two of Rosina’s melodies have earlier roots: her tune in the Act II trio (“Ah, qual culpo”) is borrowed from Rossini’s cantata Egle ed Irene (1814), and the earliest music in the opera is her tune at the words “Ah, tu solo Amor tu sei” in her “Dunque io son” duet with Figaro (first heard as Fanny’s aria “Vorrei spiegarvi” in Rossini’s very first public success, The Marriage Contract, 1810). 18 | BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018
Rossini’s grave, in the Santa Croce basilica in Florence, Italy.
LEGACY
After Barber, Rossini dominated Italian and French operatic stages, completing two dozen more operas including the farcical La Cenerentola and his epic Guillaume Tell (whose music inspired parts of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen). He retired before the age of forty to Paris and Passy, France in order to concentrate on cooking, entertaining, and philanthropy, but continued to be involved with music education (in Bologna) and occasional compositions intended for sacred or private performance. A Viennese newspaper described him at the age of 50, “of agreeable manner and pleasant appearance, full of wit and fun, cheerful, obliging, courteous, and most accessible. He is much in society, and charms everyone by his simple unassuming style.” He claimed to have cried only three times in his life: over the opening night fiasco of Barber, after hearing violinist Niccolò Paganini for the first time, and when his favorite lunch (turkey with truffles) fell overboard during a Parisian boating party. Upon his death in 1868, his estate passed to his wife, who donated most of it to found a conservatory of music in Pesaro, his birthplace; they hold an annual festival dedicated to his operas. w
“...PARADISE” FROM PAGE 6
everything was better.” The imposing novelist Thomas Mann, with whom Schoenberg had a complicated love-hate relationship, insisted grandly that he was able to maintain his German identity anywhere, including his luxurious home in Pacific Palisades: “Where I am there is Germany.”
FALL CODA CONTRIBUTORS v Lucy Caplan (page 12) is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, where she is writing a dissertation on African American opera in the early twentieth century. She is the recipient of the 2016 Rubin Prize for Music Criticism.
And yet the Schoenbergs always invited Americans along with Europeans to their legendary Sunday afternoon parties, where a lavish assortment of Viennese delicacies was served. Two of the Schoenbergs’ rambunctious children were born in America, exposing them further to American youth culture. Although he always spoke with a strong accent, Schoenberg became fluent enough in English so that he could teach and deliver lectures. He reportedly liked American food, particularly ice cream, and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for his children. The mild, sunny climate allowed him to play his favorite sport of tennis year-round. American movies and television he regarded with a certain disdain, but he confessed to a fondness for “The Lone Ranger” and “Hopalong Cassidy.” At Thanksgiving, the Schoenbergs sat down to the traditional American ritual of a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
v John Conklin (page 8) is an internationally-recognized set designer and dramaturg. He has designed sets on and off Broadway, at the Kennedy Center and for opera companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Bastille Opera in Paris, the Royal Opera and the opera houses of Munich, Amsterdam, and Bologna, among many others. Mr. Conklin is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School and has served as the Artistic Advisor to BLO since 2009.
As a professor at UCLA, Schoenberg interacted with a wide variety of students. How much he enjoyed this activity is a matter of debate. He once famously complained about the “inadequate grounding” of the students, and quipped that “my work is as much a waste of time as if Einstein were having to teach mathematics at a secondary school.” And yet his students included such major future figures in American music as John Cage, Lou Harrison, Leon Kirchner, David Raskin, and the prolific film composer Alfred Newman. They regarded him with affection and gratitude.
v Harlow Robinson (page 5) is an author, lecturer and Matthews Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians, and The Last Impresario: The Life, Times and Legacy of Sol Hurok. He is a frequent lecturer and annotator for The Boston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Guild, Lincoln Center and Aspen Music Festival.
Did Schoenberg ever come to consider himself an American composer? The answer is a resounding, “No.” In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 1950, one year before he died, Schoenberg remarked, “If America changed me, I am not aware of it.” He expanded on this idea in a conversation with Olin Downes of The New York Times: “The musical culture of a nation certainly takes on a racial or at least a national style. Here am I, educated in music from the German standpoint. I cannot think music in some other way— in the way that Bizet thought music from France or a Verdi from Italy. I have been trained in another way and have grown up in it. Therefore the German culture certainly tinges my music. I feel from Americans a different musical attitude or instinct toward harmonic relations than my own. I confess to you that I can feel this difference more readily than I can define it. It is something to be studied, and it should mean something to music.”
v Laura Stanfield Prichard (page 2) is a Visiting Researcher in Music and Dance History at Harvard University and regular contributor to the Boston Musical Intelligencer. After teaching and performing in San Francisco for ten years, she is now a popular pre-concert speaker and university lecturer in the Boston area (principal speaker for Boston Baroque and Berkshire Choral International). She was an Assistant Director for the SF Symphony Chorus under Vance George’s direction, and is a regular speaker/writer for the Chicago Symphony, New World Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and Merola Program.
German, Austrian, Jewish, American—none of these identities can completely define Schoenberg. Music was his nation and his religion. w BOSTON LYRIC OPERA CODA FALL 2018 | 19
Did you know that Deborah Voigt sang at BLO? Patricia Racette? Lawrence Brownlee? In preparation for BLO’s annual Gala—which was held this year on Saturday, September 29 at City Winery in Boston—we took a deep dive through the BLO Archives to find some of our amazing photographs of artists who sang at BLO before they became opera superstars. Check out a few of the gems!
1991/92 Season: Patricia Racette as Antonia and John Fowler as Hoffmann in The Tales of Hoffmann. Set design by Richard M. Isackes and costume design by Daniel Lawson.
1995/96 Season: Lorraine Hunt in the title role of Xerxes. Set design by Thomas Lynch, costume design by Martin Pakledinaz. RICHARD FELDMAN RICHARD FELDMAN
1995/96 Season: David Evitts as Falstaff and Robert Honeysucker as Master Ford in Falstaff. Set design and costume design by Neil Peter Jampolis.
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CURTAINS
A LOOK BACK AT BLO’S PAST PRODUCTIONS
RICHARD FELDMAN
2002/03 Season: Keith Phares (Figaro), Lawrence Brownlee (Count Almaviva), Chester Patton (Basilio), Terry Hodges (Dr. Bartolo), Margaret Lattimore (Rosina), and Janna Baty (Berta) in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Set design by Francesco Calcagnini, costume design by Anna Maria Heinreich.
1990/91 Season: Deborah Voigt as Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos. Set design by John Michael Deegan/ Sarah G. Conly, costume coordinator Sonnenberg Studios. MICHAEL ROMANOS
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Coda
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noun \ co·da \ ‘kō-d \ symbol O \ (1) a concluding musical section that is formally distinct from the main structure (2) something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize and usually has its own interest.
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