Act I, Scene I: “Da zu dir der Heiland kam” [When the Savior came to thee]
Act II, Scene I: “Johannistag! Johannistag!” [St. John’s Day]
Act III, Scene V: “Wach’ auf! es nahet gen den Tag” [Wake up, the dawn approaches]
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Parsifal, WWV 111
Act I, Scene I: Verwandlungsmusik [Transformation Music]
Lohengrin, WWV 75
Prelude to Act III
Act III, Scene I: “Treulich geführt” [“Bridal Chorus”]
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Tannhäuser, WWV 70
Act III, Scene I: “Beglückt darf nun dich, o Heimat, ich schauen” [Joyfully I may now look on thee, O my homeland]
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
INTERMISSION
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Die Zauberflöte, K. 620
Overture
Act I, Scene III: “Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn” [This path leads you to your goal]
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
La forza del destino Overture
Nabucco
Act III, Scene II: “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate” [Go, thought, on wings of gold] Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
La traviata Prelude
Act I: “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” [Let’s drink from the joyful chalices] Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Aida
Act II, Scene II: “Gloria all’Egitto, ad Iside” [“Triumphal March”] Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Il trovatore
Act II, Scene I: “Vedi! le fosche notturne” [“Anvil Chorus”] Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
The 2024.25 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION
The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes.
Program notes by David Jensen
Marked by grandeur, prestige, drama, and debate, perhaps no other creative pursuit in the West is as fraught with difficulty — or, for that matter, as capable of pointing toward the sublime — as that of opera. Emerging from the theatrical, aristocratic diversions of the Italianate courts at the beginning of the 17th century, the discipline has blossomed over the course of four centuries to embrace a rich tapestry of language, music, choreography, and aesthetics, as is so often explicated by Wagner’s description of the form as the Gesamtkunstwerk (or “total work of art”). Our final performances of the 2024-25 season bring together some of the most inventive choral capstones of the repertoire by three of its most revolutionary exponents.
RICHARD WAGNER
Born 22 May 1813; Leipzig, Germany Died 13 February 1883; Venice, Italy
Equally at home as polemicist, conductor, dramatist, librettist, and composer, Richard Wagner stood at the fore of one of the most crucial turning points in the history of classical music. An artist with a singular drive to transform the conventions of stagecraft, his lavish orchestration, extended chromatic harmonies, highly developed integration of leitmotifs (musical fragments alluding to specific characters, settings, or concepts), and determination to synthesize the poetic, musical, and dramatic facets of the theater in service of his narratives expanded the expressive powers of the orchestra and thrust classical music into a daring new epoch.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) is an exception to Wagner’s typically weighty operatic fare: it is one of his only comedic endeavors, and the action is grounded in the realism of Renaissance Nuremberg, using the practices of the master singer guilds as a frame for the allegory of musical tradition in conflict with artistic innovation. The prelude immediately suggests a renewal of the common-practice tonality of the early 18th century and moves directly into the opening scene as a church service concludes with a magnificent rendition of the Lutheran chorale tradition (“Da zu dir der Heiland kam”). Act II opens with a radiantly orchestrated depiction of Midsummer Day (“Johannistag! Johannistag!”) as the apprentices gather in celebration before singing the praises of Hans Sachs (“Wach’ auf! es nahet gen den Tag”), the historical master singer who oversees the singing competition at the heart of the opera’s final act.
Wagner more frequently looked to German or Norse mythology for subject matter that suited his lofty artistic aims. The Verwandlungsmusik (“transformation music”) from Act I of Parsifal (1882), Wagner’s retelling of the eponymous medieval knight who seeks the Holy Grail, was originally written to account for a set change between scenes and, with its dramatic brass fanfares and chiming bells, foreshadows the entry into the Hall of the Grail and quotes the socalled “communion” leitmotif introduced in the opera’s prelude. Lohengrin (1850), premiered more than 30 years earlier, weaves together the story of the knight sent to protect Elsa, the duchess of Brabant, with elements of Greek tragedy: the famed “Bridal Chorus” which follows their wedding precedes a wretched separation precipitated by human frailty. Similarly, Tannhäuser (1845) drew upon two primary sources: the legend of the Sängerkrieg (“minstrel contest”) at the Wartburg castle and that of Tannhäuser, the traveling poet. The “Pilgrims’ Chorus” (“Beglückt darf nun dich, o Heimat”) of the final act is heard as Elisabeth, the princess awaiting his return from a redemptory sojourn, watches a crowd of pilgrims celebrating their absolution by the pope — a luxury Tannhäuser would ultimately be denied.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Born 27 January 1756; Salzburg, Holy Roman Empire
Died 5 December 1791; Vienna, Austria
Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte premiered in 1791, just two months before the composer’s death, and has remained one of his most brilliantly rendered and endlessly popular scores ever since. Conceived as a singspiel (“sing-play”), then a popular Germanic musico-dramatic form, Mozart entwined exquisite ensemble numbers, solo arias, and spoken word in an opulent account of Prince Tamino’s noble efforts to rescue the fair Pamina from the the high priest Sarastro at the behest of the Queen of the Night. By the tale’s conclusion, however, it becomes quite clear that the devious Queen’s actions were motivated only by personal gain: as she and her underlings are banished to eternal night in the final scene, Sarastro joins Tamino and Pamina in marriage as the victors celebrate the triumph of good over evil. The German libretto, contributed by Emanuel Schikaneder, the impresario and dramatist responsible for the construction of the Theater an der Wien, is drawn from August Jacob Liebeskind’s fairytale Lulu oder die Zauberflöte, and makes wonderful use of its fantastical features, rife as the opera is with monsters, trickery, magic, and trials of the spirit.
Perhaps no aspect of the opera has been written about at greater length than its obvious allusions to the Freemasons, of which both Mozart and Schikaneder were members. The number three, which carries symbolic significance in the masonic tradition (most notably in the divisions of life into past, present, and future; the virtues of brotherly love, relief, and truth; and the holy trinity) is repeatedly emphasized: the cast includes three ladies, three spirits, and three priests, and the overture itself begins with three distinct chords. More broadly, the scenario can be interpreted against the backdrop of Enlightenment ethics — namely the pursuit of intellectual and spiritual self-actualization. Nowhere is this more evident than in the finale of Act I (“Zum Ziele führt dich diese Bahn”) as the three spirits, leading Prince Tamino to the temples of Reason, Nature, and Wisdom, underscore the value of remaining “steadfast, patient, and wise.”
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Born 9 or 10 October 1813; Le Roncole, Italy
Died 27 January 1901; Milan, Italy
Born the same year as Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi developed an approach to the theater that was diametrically opposed to the immense, harmonically radical productions of his German contemporary. Inheriting the Italianate bel canto style that had dominated opera in the first decades of the 19th century, he gradually transformed the customs of his time to elevate the role of the orchestra without compromising the emotive authority of the human voice, sculpting some of the most strikingly memorable melodies in the operatic canon. The manuscripts that remain to us from the creative peak of his mature period reveal a careful working out of material, first as piano reductions with vocal lines sketched above, which were then gradually shaped over the course of rehearsals to develop orchestration — implying that Verdi’s concern, from the beginning, was the primacy of the vocal line and the long dramatic arch of his work.
Verdi’s penchant for working with text that inspired him (almost always featuring people enmeshed in disastrous circumstances) resulted in an enormous variety of character studies. La forza del destino (1862) was, to use Verdi’s words, an opera “made with ideas” — in its examination of love, free will, and violence, he painted extraordinary portraits of the starcrossed Leonora and Don Alvaro. The overture, which begins with a three-note motive on a unison E in the brass, embodies the force of “fate,” suggesting the clear influence of Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini in its elegant major-key episodes, eventually modulating to E major as the curtain rises. Nabucco (1842), the first of Verdi’s works to establish him as an international authority, chronicles the troubles of the Jewish people as they’re cast from their homeland by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (“Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate”).
The prelude to La traviata (1853), with its delicate string writing, intimates a very different aspect of Verdi’s voice, its softer, subtler quality presaging the tragedy that meets the Parisian courtesan Violetta and her lover, the young bourgeois Alfredo. The brindisi, or drinking song, that follows (“Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”), with its charming musings on the ephemeral nature of love and pleasure, is a perennial favorite of singers and audiences alike and remains one of Verdi’s best-known melodies. In his sprawling, fanciful Aida (1871), Verdi imagines the Old Kingdom of Egypt alive with the human foibles of forbidden love and the thirst for imperial power: the glorious “Triumphal March” (“Gloria all’Egitto, ad Iside”) sings the praises of Egypt, its king, and its gods as Radamès, captain of the king’s guard, returns victorious from war. Our program concludes with the rousing “Anvil Chorus” from Il trovatore (1853), sung by the Spanish Romani laborers striking their anvils as the sun rises, extolling the merits of women, wine, and work.
2024.25 SEASON
KEN-DAVID MASUR
Music Director
Polly and Bill Van Dyke
Music Director Chair
EDO DE WAART
Music Director Laureate
BYRON STRIPLING
Principal Pops Conductor
Stein Family Foundation Principal Pops Conductor Chair
RYAN TANI
Assistant Conductor
CHERYL FRAZES HILL
Chorus Director
Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair
TIMOTHY J. BENSON
Assistant Chorus Director
FIRST VIOLINS
Jinwoo Lee, Concertmaster, Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair
Ilana Setapen, First Associate Concertmaster, Thora M. Vervoren First Associate Concertmaster Chair
Jeanyi Kim, Associate Concertmaster
Alexander Ayers
Autumn Chodorowski
Yuka Kadota
Sheena Lan**
Elliot Lee**
Dylana Leung
Kyung Ah Oh
Lijia Phang
Yuanhui Fiona Zheng
SECOND VIOLINS
Jennifer Startt, Principal, Andrea and Woodrow Leung Second Violin Chair
Ji-Yeon Lee, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
John Bian, Assistant Principal (3rd chair)*
Hyewon Kim, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Glenn Asch
Lisa Johnson Fuller
Clay Hancock
Paul Hauer
Janis Sakai**
Mary Terranova
VIOLAS
Robert Levine, Principal, Richard O. and Judith A. Wagner Family Principal Viola Chair
Samantha Rodriguez, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair), Friends of Janet F. Ruggeri Viola Chair
Alejandro Duque, Acting Assistant Principal (3rd chair)
Elizabeth Breslin
Georgi Dimitrov
Nathan Hackett
Erin H. Pipal
CELLOS
Susan Babini, Principal, Dorothea C. Mayer Cello Chair
Shinae Ra, Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Scott Tisdel, Associate Principal Emeritus
Madeleine Kabat
Peter Szczepanek
Peter J. Thomas
Adrien Zitoun
BASSES
Principal, Donald B. Abert Bass Chair
Andrew Raciti, Acting Principal
Nash Tomey, Acting Assistant Principal (2nd chair)
Brittany Conrad Omar Haffar**
Paris Myers
HARP
Julia Coronelli, Principal, Walter Schroeder Harp Chair
FLUTES
Sonora Slocum, Principal, Margaret and Roy Butter Flute Chair
Heather Zinninger, Assistant Principal
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
PICCOLO
Jennifer Bouton Schaub
OBOES
Katherine Young Steele, Principal, Milwaukee Symphony League Oboe Chair
Kevin Pearl, Assistant Principal
Margaret Butler
ENGLISH HORN
Margaret Butler, Philip and Beatrice Blank English Horn Chair in memoriam to John Martin
