Statues and Stories: Student Recital by London Roysden

carthage music department presents

Statues and Stories Student Recital by London Roysden Featuring Melissa Cardamone, piano Katiann Nelson, clarinet, composer Savannah Kroeger, mezzo-soprano

Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021 | 7:30 p.m. | Recital Hall

program Dove sono from Le nozze di Figaro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D.965 Katiann Nelson, clarinet

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Ariettes oubliées Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

C’est l’extase langoureuse

Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville

L’ombre des arbres dans la rivière embrumée

Chevaux de bois Green Spleen Statues and Stories from The Light in the Piazza Savannah Kroeger, mezzo-soprano

Adam Guettel (b. 1964)

House, Home, Roommate K. Nelson (b. 2000)

The Fairest Home The Lonely House

I dwell in possibility Goodnight Moon

Eric Whitacre (b. 1970)

biography London Roysden, a Kenosha native, will be graduating from Carthage College in the Spring with degrees in Vocal Performance and Choral Music Education. Her senior recital will showcase a culmination of her last three and a half years at Carthage, during which she studied voice with Professors Peg Cleveland and Allison Hull.

London placed 2nd among Junior Women in the 2020 Wisconsin NATS competition, and has been selected to perform in Carthage’s 2020 and 2021 Honors Recitals. She recently finished a summer fellowship with the Kenosha Opera Festival, where she had the opportunity to develop her craft outside of a school setting and work with professional artists from all over the world. She is also very thankful to have been singing with Carthage’s flagship choral ensemble, Carthage Choir, since she was a first-year student, including during their first-place victory at the International Choir Competition in Spittal, Austria. London would like to thank Melissa and Savannah for their inspiring musicianship and contributions to her recital, Peg, Allison, Greg, Dr. Garcia-Novelli, Polly Amborn, and the KOF directors for their thoughtful guidance, both musical and personal, her Mom, Liam, and Mitch for their love, and Katiann Nelson for all of the above.

program notes Dove Sono “Where are the beautiful moments of sweetness and of pleasure?” Mozart’s “Dove sono” is the second aria sung by the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. While much of the opera is silly and comedic, the Countess gives the audience the opportunity to take a break, to reflect, to feel heartbreak, to not only be entertained, but to be enthralled emotionally. “Dove sono” allows the audience to find hope in the despair, contrasting “Porgi amor,” the Countess’s preceding aria, characterized by fully consuming angst. As a singer, the contrast between the recit, which explores sadness, regret, anxiety, rage, and fear, and the aria itself, a more consistent melancholy, provides endless opportunity for new interpretation with each sing. Singers and listeners alike have found the monotonous beauty of this intimate melody entrancing since its 1786 Vienna premiere. Unfortunately, the Countess will always experience this aria as a tragic piece of introspection, as she wonders why, after all this pain and heartbreak, has the longing for these “beautiful moments” not passed?

Shepherd on the Rock Franz Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen,” or “The Shepherd on the Rock,” offers different challenges than Mozart’s “Dove sono.” Written for soprano and clarinet, I’m so excited to be collaborating with my roommate, Katiann Nelson. An interesting challenge for the both of us in putting this piece together was finding the special moments of conversation, blend, and balance between the two melodic instruments. Apart from this, I enjoyed exploring the ways in which the text allowed me to interpret these phrases, using meaning and diction to motivate each choice. This text, by Wilhelm Müller, is about as Romantic as it gets; a lonely traveler gazes from atop a cliff, longing for his lost love and hearing the echoes of his song come up from the valley, awaiting the impending Spring. These echoes, which you will hear tossed between the clarinet and voice, invite the performers to question who makes the cry and who echoes it.

Ariettes Oubliees Claude Debussy’s “Ariettes oubliées” represent the largest challenge of vocal repertoire that I’ve ever tackled. This set, comprised of six pieces from seemingly vastly different worlds, was written surprisingly early in Debussy’s career, considering the complex harmonic and melodic content. Each of these pieces, with texts by Debussy’s frequent companion in life and music, Paul Verlaine, depicts a different scene. Debussy makes spectacularly profound use of text painting in each of these movements. At first glance, these pieces are difficult to connect, as they vary so drastically in style and topic. This poses a lifelong challenge to performers, and I find myself only beginning to uncover the answer to this riddle.

The first piece, “C’est l’extase langoureuse,” paints a picture through pastoral imagery of an intense romance. In the second, and the most dramatically anguished of the set, which is really saying something, “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” the speaker compares the tears falling in their heart with the patter of the rain outside their window. Next comes “L’ombre des arbes,” a similar sentiment to the previous piece, with more nature imagery: “how your drowned hopes weep sadly in the tall foliage.” The fourth movement, my favorite, radically shifts into a childlike wonder at the “Chevaux de bois,” or “wooden horses,” ever turning on a carousel. The catchy melody of “tournez, tournez,” appears in a few keys, mirroring the childlike excitement present in the text. The fifth piece, “Green,” explores the rhythmic tension that comes from contrasting duple and triple rhythms in one phrase, reflecting the hypnotic, yet surprising beauty of nature. Finally comes “Spleen,” the most seemingly musically disjunct of all, a surprising end to any song cycle. Each phrase offers a new atmosphere, as the speaker tries to grapple with the meaning of love, loss, and despair.

Statues and Stories For “Statues and Stories,” I welcome to the stage my good friend Savannah Kroeger. This summer, the two of us were very lucky to be voice fellows during the inaugural season of the Kenosha Opera Festival, where I was given another piece from the same musical, The Light in the Piazza. I first experienced The Light in the Piazza in 2019 at the Chicago Lyric Opera, with Renée Fleming singing the role of Margaret. This piece opens the musical, introducing us to the two main characters, Margaret (Savannah) and Clara (myself ), mother and daughter, Americans on vacation in Florence, “Firenze.” The characters get to discover, or rediscover

program notes themselves, amongst the historically significant art and history of Florence through their own lenses, kind of like what this recital is doing! Margaret sees the world through facts, logic, and the tangible things in front of them (statues), while Clara sees fairy tales and love (stories).

Both Savannah and I as performers, and you as the audience are prompted to reflect on the way in which we all go about discovering ourselves and the world; how can we find balance and beauty between statues and stories?

House Home Roommate “Art is best utilized as a weapon, a writing back, as evidence that we were here.” This premise, as articulated by Lola Olufemi, was the guiding factor for the composition of the three songs that make up “House, Home, Roommate.” Emily Dickinson was heavily censored during her time, due to her gender, her revolutionary use of grammar, and highly controversial thematic content. Dickinson’s male publishers, during her day, would go so far as to alter words and whole phrases of her poetry before publication, so as to make them more “appropriate” for their audiences. These compositions are intended to defy those people who censored Dickinson’s poetry and give platform to these incredible texts, to prove that she was there.

The first piece, a folksy interpretation of two separate Dickinson poems, is entitled “The Fairest Home.” This piece offers a lighthearted introduction to the set, but still underlines Emily’s sense of isolation and longing for simplicity in life. The second piece, “The Lonely House,” is one of Dickinson’s most famous poems. It is often interpreted as a lighthearted and comedic piece of storytelling, but this interpretation does not credit Dickinson’s depth of thought and feeling. In writing the second piece, Katiann chose to interpret the text as a scathing critique of the ways in which society fails to provide and care for those who live on the margins. The set concludes with boundless accompaniment and courageous melodic intent to match the immensity of Dickinson’s profound text, “I Dwell in Possibility”: I dwell in Possibility\ a fairer House than Prose\ More numerous of Windows\ Superior for Doors\ Of Chambers as the Cedars\ Impregnable of eye\ And for an everlasting Roof\ The Gambrels of the Sky\ Of Visitors - the fairest\ For Occupation - This\ The spreading wide my narrow Hands\ To gather Paradise It has been such a wonderful, unique, and fun experience to collaborate with Katiann in this new way, and I am honored to share in her art song debut. In the words of the composer, “These songs are for London, who I couldn’t be more honored to have written for. It is so special to be able to trust her with these compositions, as a musician, a voice for justice, and the truest friend I could ask for. This set is created for 6225 7th Avenue, apartment 305, and an incredible soprano: House, Home, Roommate”.

Goodnight Moon Goodnight Moon, by Eric Whitacre, using the text from the storybook by the same title, was conceived while he listened to the story being read by his wife to their child. The ebb and flow of the vocal line in this piece is reminiscent of reading a picture book to a child, with lots of pauses, and spontaneous changes from loud to soft or high to low. I was honored to have had the opportunity last Spring to perform an arrangement of this piece with the Carthage Wind Orchestra, and I am thrilled to be revisiting it as it was originally composed, for piano and voice. Both experiences have colored the piece in different ways, and I am particularly enjoying the intimacy that the duet between voice and piano offers. It’s difficult to not be reminded of the memories of my own mom reading bedtime stories to me and my brother, including this one, and for the first time, I get to read the bedtime story back to her. It feels fitting to program this piece at the end of my senior recital, as I bid goodnight to each experience that I have treasured during my time at Carthage.

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