Upcoming and Noteworthy

We’re not going anywhere anytime soon, but thankfully there are plenty of movies and music to engage the imagination.  So pack your valise for selections from “Enchanted April” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “A Passage to India” (Maurice Jarre), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (Thomas Newman) and “Around the World in 80 Days” (Victor Young).  We’ll be doing some armchair traveling, this Friday at 6 pm. 

The first completed opera by Richard Wagner Is the featured work on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/5 3:00 p.m.).  “Die Feen” or “The Fairies” was begin in 1833 when Wagner was 20 years old, but the opera would not be performed until five years after his death in 1888.  Wagner based his libretto on a 1762 fable by Carlo Gozzi titled “La donna serpente,” and the libretto is terribly complicated.  Basically, it deals with a fairy princess who is in love with and marries a mortal, but there are stipulations which, if not met, would result with the princess being turned into a statue and the mortal beset by madness.   Even with that, there’s a happy ending.  

We’re covering over ninety years of theatre history on this week’s Dress Circle (4/5 7:00 p.m.) as we showcase songs from some of the shows that opened in New York in April.    Normally, “April showers bring May flowers,” but this year has been pretty strange, and it seems, to those of us who suffer from allergies, that every plant in the natural world is tossing its pollen happily into the air far too early.  Our earliest show is “Hit the Deck,” and our latest show is the current Broadway hit “Hadestown.”  

Though steeped in the comparatively conservative milieu of the English musical renaissance at the turn of last century, John Foulds possessed a physical, intellectual, spiritual, and creative wanderlust.  So diverse were Foulds’ output and enthusiasms that it is difficult, if not impossible, to encapsulate the scope of his achievements within a single hour.  We’ll do our best, with his light concert overture “April – England,” “Three Mantras” from the abandoned Sanskrit opera, “Avatara,” and selections from “A World Requiem.”  It’s a Foulds paradise, this Sunday at 10 pm. 

From the Top is known for its multi-talented young people whose creativity goes beyond music. So it was really no surprise that the idea for its Daily Joy, short musical performance videos recorded by its alumni and shared online each day, came from those very talented artists. Executive Director Gretchen Nielsen and cellist Sarah Tindall, a senior from Harleysville, PA who performs David Popper’s "Vito" on her Daily Joy, shared their thoughts about what inspired the ideas for the project.

Nick sat against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette.  He lit a match and watched it burn and as it burned he thought of boxers and marlins and the Spanish Civil War.  The stories were brave and strong and good.  He thought about selections from “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (Victor Young) and “Islands in the Stream” (Jerry Goldsmith) and “The Killers” (Miklós Rózsa) and “The Old Man and the Sea” (Dimitri Tiomkin).  He ordered a mojito and prepared to face the music, this Friday at 6 pm.

We’ll be hearing from two Victorian women with two happy endings on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/29 3:00 p.m.) in the form of “Patience” and “Dorothy.”  “Patience” is the better known of the two and comes from the pens of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.   Patience has never loved, and she looks at all of the lovesick maidens pining after others with scorn.  They all love an aesthetic poet named Reginald Bunthorne, but he loves Patience who rejects him causing him to decide to auction himself off to one of the other ladies with the proceeds going to charity as he really doesn’t like poetry.  Patience actually had a childhood love who appears as another aesthetic poet named Archibald Grosvenor who is known far and wide as “Archibald the All-Right.”  Patience cannot love him now because he is perfection, and it would be selfish for her to do so.   Of course, everything works out for the best; all those who are available find a match, and we have the necessary happy ending.  

Among several things, March is Foreign Language Month, and we’ll be celebrating that on this week’s Dress Circle (3/29 7:00 p.m.) with songs from some well-known English language musicals from some of their foreign language versions.

Wagner wrote symphonies?  That’s right.  He took a crack at writing two of them, in a Beethovenian style, before finding his niche as a revolutionary opera composer.  Wagner’s Symphony in E will be heard, alongside early attempts by Gustav Holst and Claude Debussy.  Judging from their mature works, these three would be among the least likely to attempt sonata form.  Impetuous youth!  Composers at the start of their careers find the courage to strive for symphonic mastery, this Sunday at 10 pm.

What, you doubt the Baron’s veracity?  Then surely the music must speak for itself.  Tune in for selections from “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (Michael Kamen), “Münchhausen” (Georg Haentzschel), “The Saragossa Manuscript” (Krzysztof Penderecki), and “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (Bernard Herrmann).  Tall tales rub shoulders with Lilliputians, this Friday at 6 pm.

A romantic comedy is just what is needed now, and we have one on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/22 3:00 p.m.) with Carl Nielsen’s “Maskarade” in a recording from 1996.  Leander (Gert-Henning Jensen) and Leonora (Henriette Bonde-Hansen) fall in love at a masquerade ball, swear their undying love, and exchange rings forgetting that they have each been promised in marriage to others whom they’ve never met.  Of course, as often happens in these things, they are really betrothed to each other.  When their fathers, Jeronimous (Aage Haugland) and Leonard (Kurt Ravn) find out that their children have fallen in love not knowing that it’s actually what the fathers wanted, it only adds to the confusion.   

It’s “Togas Tonight” on this week’s Dress Circle (3/22 7:00 p.m.) as we look at musicals set in ancient Greece and Rome from the pens of Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Harold Adamson, and Burton Lane.  Those musicals include “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Out of This World,” “The Boys from Syracuse,” “The Frogs,” and “Jupiter’s Darling.” 

Nearly 150 years after her death, composer Louise Farrenc is finally coming into her own.  Farrenc (pictured) was the only female musician on the faculty of the Paris Conservatory during the whole of the 19th century.  Of course, she was only allowed to teach women.   Tune in to hear her Symphony No. 3, alongside works by Augusta Holmès and Marie Grandval.  Look for the women, this Sunday at 10 pm.

The music of Hector Berlioz will be featured on this week’s Sunday Opera (3/15 3:00 p.m.) as we turn to his 1838 semiseria work “Benvenuto Cellini.”  Although Berlioz was fascinated by the accounts of the life of this 16th century Italian sculptor and rogue, very little of Cellini’s actual life found its way into the work.  Cellini has been commissioned by the Pope, through his treasurer Balducci, to create the statue of the victory of Perseus over Medusa.  Balducci wanted a rival sculptor, Fieramosca, to have both the commission and his daughter, Teresa’s, hand.  Teresa loves Cellini, and their plot to run away during carnival is overheard by Fieramosca, and confusion ensues.  Will Cellini get his nearly 17-foot-tall statue cast or will he fail, lose Teresa, and suffer the wrath of the Pope?  Tune in this Sunday to see.