REQUIEM
THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2025 / 7:30 PM / BROWNING CENTER, WEBER STATE, OGDEN
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2025 / 7:30 PM / MAURICE ABRAVANEL HALL
SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2025 / 5:30 PM / MAURICE ABRAVANEL HALL
CHRISTOPHER ALLEN , conductor
DEANNA BREIWICK , soprano
CECELIA HALL , mezzo-soprano
MATTHEW NEWHOUSE , tenor
LEVI HERNANDEZ , baritone
UTAH SYMPHONY CHORUS | AUSTIN MCWILLIAMS , director
UTAH SYMPHONY
CONCERT SPONSOR
GUEST ARTISTS SPONSOR
ORCHESTRA SPONSOR
MOZART
MOZART
Overture to The Magic Flute (7’)
Symphony No. 25 in G minor (24’)
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante
III. Menuetto
IV. Allegro
INTERMISSION
MOZART
Requiem - completed by Robert Levin (47’)
I. Introitus
Requiem aeternam
Kyrie
II. Sequentia
Dies irae
Tuba mirum
Rex tremendae
Recordare
Confutatis
Lacrimosa - Amen
III. Offertorium
Domine Jesu
Hostias
IV. Sanctus
Sanctus
Benedictus
V. Agnus Dei
Agnus Dei
VI. Communio
Lux aeterna
Cum sanctis tuis
Christopher Allen Conductor
Recipient of The Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Christopher Allen is featured in Opera News as “one of the fastest-rising podium stars in North America.” He has led acclaimed operatic and symphonic performances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Virginia Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, George Enescu Philharmonic, West Los Angeles Symphony, Cincinnati Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opera Omaha, Opéra de Montréal, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Washington National Opera, Detroit Opera, North Carolina Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Atlanta Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Daegu Opera House in South Korea, Korean Symphony Orchestra, and China National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
Deanna Breiwick Soprano
American soprano Deanna Breiwick, hailed by The New York Times for her “sweet sound and floating high notes” and for being a “vocal trapeze artist,” is enjoying an exciting and diverse career. In the 24/25 season, Deanna Breiwick will sing Lisette in La rondine at Opéra de Monte Carlo, Adele in Die Fledermaus at Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and join the Utah Symphony for Mozart’s Requiem, the Allentown Symphony for VaughanWilliams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, as well as present recitals under the auspices of The Florentine Opera and the Pacific Vocal Series in Laguna Beach, CA.
In the 23/24 season, Ms. Breiwick returned to The Dallas Opera for the world premiere of Gene Scheer and Jody Talbot’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, singing the role of Claude. In concert, she performed Lisette in La rondine with Washington Concert Opera, Messiah with the Oregon Symphony, VaughanWilliams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Venice and Owensboro Symphonies, and held a residency with the Moab Music Festival. In recital, she will return to the Laguna Art Museum to present a solo recital.
Cecelia Hall
Mezzo-soprano
Hailed by the Financial Times for her “easy flexibility, arresting poise and enveloping warmth,” mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall is a member of Oper Frankfurt’s prestigious ensemble and appears regularly as a guest artist on many of the world’s finest stages. For her recent debut as Carmen at Austin Opera, Cat McCarrey of the Austin Chronicle wrote “Hall’s sultry mezzo conveyed strength with a current of madness in each fluidly sensual move.”
Highlights of Hall’s 2024-25 season include Der Komponist in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos at Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza conducted by Guillermo García Calvo and directed by Joan Antón Rechi, and four new productions at Oper Frankfurt: Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg conducted by Takeshi Moriuchi and directed by Jens-Daniel Herzog, Berg’s Lulu conducted by Thomas Guggeis and directed by Nadja Loschky, Magnard’s Guercoeur conducted by Marie Jacquot and directed by David Hermann, and Reimann’s Melusine conducted by Karsten Januschke and directed by Aileen Schneider. In concert, she sings Mozart’s Requiem with Utah Symphony conducted by Christopher Allen, and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang at the Alte Oper Frankfurt conducted by Thomas Guggeis.
Matthew Newhouse
Tenor
Tenor Matthew Newhouse is a powerful storyteller in concert and historical performance. He has performed across North America, the United Kingdom, and Germany with esteemed conductors Masaaki Suzuki, Grete Pedersen, Nic McGegan, David Hill, and Christopher Allen. Alongside his wellanticipated Utah Symphony debut, Newhouse debuted with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in Handel’s Messiah. Recent soloist highlights include Evangelist in Schütz’s Weihnachtshistorie with Harmonia Stellarum, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with Bach Akademie Charlotte, Evangelist in J.S. Bach’s Weihnnachtsoratorium with Yale Schola Cantorum, and Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
An equally skilled ensemble singer, Newhouse is a core member of Fourth Wall Ensemble and The Leonids. Additional professional collaborations include TENET Vocal Artists, Apollo’s Fire, Clarion Music Society, and more. Newhouse champions Icelandic vocal repertoire and strives for its inclusion in the classical canon. He holds a Master of Music degree in Early Music Voice from Yale University.
Levi Hernandez Baritone
With a velvety tone and a stage presence which exudes confidence and charm, Levi Hernandez has made a name for himself in a wide variety of baritone repertoire. Opera News has praised him for his “voice with natural power,” and “warm, inviting baritone.” The El Paso native has joined the rosters of leading opera companies including The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Houston Grand Opera where he débuted as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
Most recently he joined El Paso Opera for their Mozart by Moonlight concert, Opera San Antonio as the Father in Hansel and Gretel, appeared as Dandini in La cenerentola with Boston Lyric Opera, performed Tonio in Pagliacci with Hawaii Opera Theatre, returned to Opera Omaha as Diego Rivera in El último sueño de Frida y Diego, and appeared with the Virginia and Oregon Symphonies in Handel’s Messiah
CHORUS
Sopranos
Zoe Allen
Jenny Andrus
Rebekah Barton Stockton
Abigail Bendixsen
Julia Bigelow
Caitlyn Bramble
Erin Bramscher
Christina Brandt
Isabella Carlton
Lauren Cartwright
Bohannan
A. Elizabeth Davis
Alexis Dazley
Cydnee Barnum Farmer
Julie Fleming
Kaylynne Fox
Olivia Fryer
Emelia Hartford
Kaily Jacobs
Macy Kelson
Rachel Kibler
Jeanne Lancaster
Audrey Meservy
Abby Payne-Peterson
Claire Phillips
Erin Rubin
Natalie Sandberg
Michaela Shelton
Austin McWilliams
Chorus Director
Austin McWilliams is a conductor and countertenor who specializes in contemporary vocal music. He strives to present compelling, intriguing art that is directly relevant to the communities in which it is performed. He began his tenure as Chorus Director & Opera Assistant Conductor at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera with the 2024/25 season.
Previously Austin was Associate Conductor and Chorus Master at Opera Grand Rapids, Head of Music at West Michigan Opera Project, and Co-Artistic Director at Ad Astra Music Festival. In Grand Rapids he was the choir director at his beloved Fountain Street Church, a non-denominational, non-creedal institution that serves as a venue for heterodox speakers and ideologies. Content in both the rehearsal hall and classroom, Austin has served as the Director of Choral Activities at Aquinas College and as adjunct faculty and opera conductor at Western Michigan University, where he studied with Kimberly Dunn Adams. He is also a faculty member at Missouri Scholars Academy, a governor’s school for gifted high school juniors in his native state.
Cherry Lynn Stewart
Margaret Straw
Carolyn Talboys-Klassen
Shichun Wang
Cassie Weintz
Lindsay Whitney
Altos
Maya Allred
Christine Anderson
MJ Ashton
Naomi Bawden
Sara Bayler
Caite Beck
Joan Jensen Bowles
Katherine Filipescu
Kate Fitzgerald
Carrie Froyd
Kyra Furman
Gabriella Gonzales
Erika Gray
Jennifer Hancock
Annette Jarvis
Catherine Jeppsen
Angela Keeton
Samantha Lange
Sylvia Miera-Fisk
Camila Ogden-Castro
Kate Olsen
Brittany Rogers
Anastasia Romanovskaya
Jenica Sedgwick
Sue Sohm
Matthew Tang
Jennifer Taylor
Maizie Toland
Sammie Tollestrup
Valerie Wadsworth
Ruth Wortley
Tenors
Stephen Anderson
Drake Bennion
Geordie Burdick
Dyson Ford
Orion Gray
Brynnen Green
Samuel Hancock
Timothy Hanna
Hayden Höglund
Matthew Koster
Camden Lawrence
Isaac Lee
Jeanne Leigh-Goldstein
David McMurray
David Mitchell
Lehi Moran
Dale C. Nielsen
John Pearce
Elijah Powell
Jesse Skeen
John P. Snow
Scott Tarbet
Carl Wadsworth
John Woeste
Edgar Zuniga
Bass
Bruce Boyes
Colton Butler
Richard Butler
Kevin DeFord
Paul Dixon
Jim Hardwick
Michael Hurst
Stephen Jackson
Seth Jensen
Thomas Klassen
Andrew Luker
Tom McFarland
Steven McGregor
Michael Moyes
Vincent Nguyen
Ryan Oldroyd
Richard Olsen
Chris Patch
Say-Eow Quah
Bryce Robinson
Jude Ruelas
Jaxson Skeen
Carson Smith
Philip Snow
By Jeff Counts
Overture to Die Zauberflöte, K. 620 (
The Magic Flute)
Duration: 7 minutes.
THE COMPOSER – WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – Mozart was working simultaneously on the Requiem, the clarinet concerto, his final string quartet and two operas during the incredibly prolific year of 1791, his last on Earth. The drama of these final creations was matched only by that of his actual life and the ill health and mysterious visits of 1791 leant an air of urgency to everything Mozart produced. It was a furious dash to the finish, the finish of an existence cut far too short after 35 brief years. Theories about the cause of Mozart’s demise have varied over the years (rheumatic fever? acute miliary fever or the ridiculous but persistent typo of “military” fever?), but his wife Constanze believed he had simply worked himself to death. She would know.
THE HISTORY – Though he started it before La clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) was the last opera Mozart completed. It was an example of the popular dramatic style known as Singspiel (a blend of singing and spoken text) and a crafty intellectual allegory on Mozart’s own Masonic associations and beliefs. The highly unusual plot is essentially the story of a prince and a bird catcher, who must complete a series of magical tests to rescue a princess and banish evil from the world. Mozart would live to see it successfully staged and conducted the premiere performances, but his death just months later would deprive him of knowing how lasting and important the work was meant to become. Three chords begin the overture in direct tribute to the Masonic themes of the opera (three being an important symbolic number). After the mysterious but inexorable introduction, it is a fleet-footed five minutes until the end. Mozart treats us right away to fugue, transformation, delightful instrumental playfulness and an invigorating sense that something special is in store. Right in the middle of this infectious activity are the famous three times three chords, the “dreimalige Akkord,” which not only echo the overture’s opening but clear the air for a brief moment with spectacular effect. It is important to view The Magic Flute not as Mozart’s benediction or farewell to opera but rather as the excited, forward-looking declaration of a young genius in his prime. This is the hopeful music of a man with plans for the future, not the last rites of someone
who felt time slipping and assumed he had said enough. From this perspective, the Overture to The Magic Flute may well be the most rewarding six minutes in music.
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1791, Methodist Church founder John Wesley died, the element Titanium was discovered, the Brandenburg Gate was completed in Berlin and Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man” was published in London.
THE CONNECTION – The Utah Symphony has performed The Magic Flute Overture countless times. The most recent performances took place in 2018 under the baton of Conner Gray Covington.
Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
Duration: 24 minutes in four movements.
THE COMPOSER – WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – Fortunes shifted for the Mozart family in 1771 when their devoted benefactor Archbishop Schrattenbach died. His replacement instituted significant changes to Salzburg’s court music scene in 1772. The new Archbishop Colloredo was a bull in the China shop of the Mozarts’ world. Concerts and masses were shortened, and purely instrumental music was restricted so punitively, Leopold and young Wolfgang traveled to Vienna in search of a better court to serve. Though they were initially unsuccessful, they both knew their days in Salzburg were numbered. The end of an era approaching fitfully for the Mozarts, but Wolfgang did what he always did. He worked.
THE HISTORY – Hieronymous von Colloredo had distinct ideas on how masses and other liturgical pieces were to be administered and his new regulations had hard and fast time limits attached to each of them. Mozart was not thrilled with the stopwatch mentality of his new employer, but he did not allow these and other restrictive frustrations to impact his other work, not in terms of quality or quantity. The 1773 trip to Vienna might not have yielded a new job, but there were other benefits to the change of scenery. Perhaps to throw Colloredo off the scent, the Mozarts first visited an old family friend, one Franz Anton Mesmer
(yes, the one from whose name the term “mesmerize” is derived) and heard the physician play a recently acquired glass harmonica. “Wolfgang too has played upon it,” his father wrote in a letter, “how I should like to have one!” Also, while in Vienna, and decidedly more germane to this topic, Mozart heard performances of several important works by Haydn. With the sounds of his idol fresh in his ear, Mozart returned home inspired to move fully beyond the elegant, confectionary quality of his early music and into a more serious compositional phase. Mozart was only 17 at the time, but maturity is the thing that shines through most brightly in the two symphonies he wrote back in Salzburg during 1773 and 1774. These sibling creations, Symphony No. 25 and Symphony No. 29, signaled a new interest in drama and emotional complexity for Mozart. This clearly came from Haydn, but the growing formal mastery and creative instrumental choices that underpinned the theatricality were all Wolfgang. Symphony No. 25, known affectionately as the “Little G minor,” was one of only two he would ever write in that dark key. The other was the “Great” No. 40, of course, and No. 25 predicts that work’s fierce emotional forthrightness.
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1773, the Boston Tea Party occurred in America, the first ship crossing of the Antarctic Circle by James Cook took place and the later-named “Whirlpool Galaxy” was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier.
THE CONNECTION – Symphony No. 25 was last performed by the Utah Symphony in 2018 under the baton of Conner Gray Covington.
Requiem, K. 626
Duration: 47 minutes in fifteen sections.
THE COMPOSER – WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – Mozart was not able to complete his greatest work. His progress on the Requiem was undermined by the busy commission schedule and failing health that marked his final year of life. Other pieces that took up his attention in 1791 were the operas La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte, the Piano Concerto No. 27, a handful of orchestra dances and couple of organ works. The Requiem was left for last and, by all accounts, Mozart labored unsuccessfully to finish it from his deathbed, often in great agony. That sad image calls up the most provocative
questions of his biography. Was this suffering really due to illness or was Mozart poisoned? If so, by whom? A bitter rival? The secret commissioner himself?
THE HISTORY – If the mystery surrounding the Requiem sounds like grand fiction, it is because most of it is. First things first: Antonio Salieri did not poison Mozart. No one did. The most credible diagnosis of his fatal sickness was rheumatic inflammatory fever, a condition with symptoms very similar to those mentioned in Mozart’s medical history. Another popular myth concerns the shadowy “gray messenger” who called on Mozart to offer the secret Requiem commission. This man was likely no more “sinister” than a lawyer’s clerk under the employ of Count Franz von Walsegg. The name Walsegg, at last, offers us some certainty. He did commission the Requiem in honor of the recently departed Countess and though he did forbid Mozart to attempt to learn his identity, it was not for the reasons popular history would have us assume. It wasn’t about murder. It was about larceny. Walsegg evidently had a penchant for commissioning works in secret so he could present them later as his own. It was a relatively harmless habit, when compared to a poisoning, and his name came to light soon after Mozart’s death anyhow. Still, Mozart’s wife Constanze had to work on Walsegg for nearly a decade to get him to officially credit Mozart. The incomplete score left the Count and Constanze with a dilemma. Who should complete the Requiem? Mozart’s student Süssmayr had specific instructions from the composer about his musical intentions should the worst come to pass, so he took an early stab at fleshing it out. He was certainly not the last. Many scholars have since tried to improve upon that original effort, including Robert Levin (in 1994), who made changes to the orchestration and added the then recently discovered Amen fugue. Interestingly, the shared and sometimes murky authorship of the complete Requiem did not bother Beethoven, who stated “If Mozart did not write the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart.”
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1791, the United States ratified the Bill of Rights, the element Titanium by English mineralogist William Gregor, the London Observer was founded and the Champs de Mars Massacre occurred in Paris.
THE CONNECTION – The Mozart Requiem is a popular work. The last Utah Symphony Masterworks presentation came in 2017 under the direction of Thierry Fischer.