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    <td width="598" valign="top" nowrap bgcolor="#A01818"><div align="center"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span class="style3">Sunday Afternoon 
      at the Opera</span><small><br>
        </small><span class="style5"><big>Your &quot;Lyric Theatre&quot; Program</big> <big>with Keith Brown</big></span><strong><small><br>
        </small><big>Programming Selections for the Months of <small>July &amp; August   2008 </small></big></strong></font></div>
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            <p><strong>SUNDAY  JULY 6th</strong> Our summertime  schedule of programming starts off appropriately enough for the weekend of the Fourth of July holiday, with American  vocal music. Ned Rorem (b. 1923) is America's greatest living composer  of the art song. (He's written nine operas, hundreds of individual songs,  choral works, symphonies, etc.)&nbsp; In 1998,  for a public celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday, he came out with an  entire song cycle in three long parts, <em>Evidence  Of Things Not Seen</em>. This work was sponsored by the New York Festival of  Song in tandem with Library of Congress. For his eightieth birthday, <em>Evidence Of Things Not Seen</em> was again  performed as part of the Roremania festival held in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of  Music. The composer was in attendance to hear the thirty-six songs interpreted  by pianist Mikael Eliason with four young vocal soloists. In 2006 this same  group of performers recorded Rorem's masterwork in Field Concert Hall at the  Curtis Institute. Albany  records issued the song cycle onto compact discs the following year. <em>Evidence Of Things Not Seen </em>takes its  title from a verse in St. Paul's  Epistle to the Hebrews. Rorem has set to music the poetry of many of his  favorite writers: W. H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Paul Goodman, and Walt Whitman,  to name but a few.<br>
Ricky Ian Gordon's <em>Orpheus and Euridice </em>(2006) is more than  a song cycle in two acts. It is a lyric theater-work that is acted out and  danced. In Gordon's take on the ancient Greek myth Orpheus is more like a Pied  Piper. The sound of his clarinet charms all creatures. His beloved Euridice  succumbs to a viral infection not unlike AIDS. Gordon wrote his own libretto.  He collaborated with choreographer Doug Varone, who directed the stage  performance and brought in his dance troupe. <em>Orpheus and Euridice</em> premiered at the Lincoln Center  in its &quot;New Visions&quot; series. Soprano Elizabeth Futral portrays  Euridice. Todd Palmer plays clarinet but it is Ricky Ian Gordon himself who  appears on stage as Orpheus in a miming role. The only other instrumentalist is  Melvin Chen on piano.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  JULY 13th </strong> We continue to focus on contemporary  American song this Sunday. My concept of lyric theater is broad enough to take  in the genre of cabaret. I have come across two recordings of live cabaret  performances that beg for airplay. Each of them features the voice of an  extraordinary American chanteuse.&nbsp; Mary  Jo Mundy's <em>Halfway to Heaven</em> documents her live shows at the Gardenia supper club in West Hollywood, California  on July 28 and 30, 2005. The Gardenia is the preeminent cabaret venue in the Los Angeles area. It is  also the oldest one, having been in continuous operation for fully a quarter of  a century. Mary Jo hosts the open mic nights there. <em>Halfway to Heaven</em> is a concept show, revolving around the singer's  emotional struggles as she physically transforms herself into a much lighter  person through gastric bypass surgery. (She used to weigh in excess of 300  pounds!) Mary Jo includes in her repertoire songs by local and not so  well-known songwriters: Ken Hirsh, Ray Jessel, Shelly Markham, Kirby Tepper,  and Shelly Goldstein. Ms. Mundy's voice will convince you in every one of these  ballads and satires. She understands how to interpret lyrics with the subtlest  of vocal inflections. Moreover, she's got superb diction, so you'll understand  exactly what she's singing about.<br>
              Andrea Marcovicci is  actually a singing actress. Her previous acting career was in daytime TV.  Hailed as &quot;The Queen of Cabaret,&quot; she has created more than  twenty-five nightclub acts, sold-out Carnegie Hall, Town Hall NYC, and appeared  at the White House. Mary Jo Mundy told me she remembers her performing at the  Gardenia too. Ms. Marcovicci received the Mabel Mercer Award for Cabaret at Lincoln Center. In November, 2007 she was at Wesleyan University's  Greene Street  Art Center  in Middletown.  In her latest show <em>I'll Be Seeing You...  Love Songs of WWII, </em>she takes the audience on a journey back to that  crucial time. She interprets many familiar standards of the 1940s. In 2004 to  commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, the show was performed in Normandy and for veterans throughout the United States.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  JULY 20th</strong>&nbsp; Every summer I try to include in the  programming mix something pastoral in nature. Over the decades several  recordings have been made of Handel's delightful masque <em>Acis and Galathea</em> (1718), which like Purcell's <em>Dido and Aeneas</em> (1689) is often considered to be the first true  opera in English-language. Handel's original Cannons scoring for <em>Acis and Galathea</em> called for pairs of  violins, cellos, and oboes or recorders with harpsichord. (No parts for violas  or bass violas.) The five singers sing in solo capacity as characters in the  mythic story, but they also join voices to form the chorus. Such were the  musical resources available to the composer for performance on the country  estate of his patron the Duke of Chandos. This intimate, small-scale version of  the work was the one released in 1988 by Newport Classics on two compact discs.  Johannes Somary conducts the tiny period instrument Amor Artis Orchestra. I  last broadcast this particular CD set on Sunday, June 4, 1995.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  JULY 27th</strong> The time has come  round in the summertime scheme of presentations to give you a Gilbert and  Sullivan operetta. This time it's an unfamiliar one, from the end of their  illustrious collaboration, <em>Utopia,  Limited</em> (1893). In  2001 Newport Classics released its first complete CD recording, <em>complete</em> meaning not just all the music  but the entire spoken dialogue as  well. In an obscure G&amp;S work like this one you really need to hear the  dialogue to understand what's going on. The only other recording of <em>Utopia, Limited</em> was a truly fine one  from the early stereo LP era, with the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. It  had none of the dialogue. I broadcast those old London ffrr vinyl discs long ago on Sunday,  July 26, 1987. The Newport  classic recording presented an American company, Ohio Light Opera. Writing in <em>Fanfare</em> magazine (July/August, 2001),  reviewer James Camner attests, &quot;The whole cast of Newport's <em>Utopia,  Limited</em> is outstanding, their English diction so crisp and clean that it is  hardly necessary to consult the libretto... Heartfelt thanks must go out from  all Savoyards to the Ohio Light Opera, their director Jon Stuart, and to the  recording producer John Ostendorf- the sound, booklet, libretto and notes are  top-notch.&quot; The Newport Classics <em>Utopia </em>was last broadcast on Sunday, July 7, 2002.</p>
            <p align="center"><strong>&nbsp;</strong><font size="2"><small><b><a href="#top"><strong>Back to the Top</strong></a></b></small></font></p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  AUGUST 3rd</strong> <em>Zarzuela</em> is the popular music theater genre of Spain, not  unlike our American musical comedy. Amadeo Vives (1871 -- 1932) was one of the  most prolific of all <em>zaruela</em> composers. <em>Dona Francisquita</em> (1923)  is considered his masterpiece. It was also enormously popular. In the years  immediately following its premiere in Madrid  it was performed at least five-thousand times throughout the Spanish-speaking  world. So many of the treasures of the <em>zaruela</em> remained unknown in North America until the release of two musically complete  recordings of <em>Dona Francisquita</em>, one  for the Audivis Valois label, another for Sony Classical, both coming out in  1994. The Sony Classical recording benefits by the incomparable voice of  superstar Mexican tenor Placido Domingo. All the musical numbers are contained  on Sony's two CDs, but next to none of the spoken  dialogue. This is the second time I have broadcast Vives' full-length, three  act comic opera, what the Spaniards call <em>genero  grande.</em> I last aired the Sony Classical discs on Sunday, July 21, 1996.<br>
                <em>Luisa  Fernanda</em> (1932) by Federico Moreno-Torroba (1891 - 1982) comes at the end of the  zarzuela tradition. After Franco took power in Spain these lyric theater works  were no longer produced. This particular work received more than a thousand  performances before the Spanish Civil War. Torroba's score is filled with  lovely melodies and stirring dances. William Jarvis of the Jarvis Conservatory  in Napa California  rendered the libretto of <em>Luisa</em> into  English for his staged adaptation. It was recorded live in 1997 in the  performance space at the Old Lisbon Winery in downtown Napa, with a cast made up entirely of  American singers. They sing in the original Spanish, but a bit of the spoken dialogue is heard in Jarvis' translation. The  musically complete <em>Luisa Fernanda</em> in  three acts is accommodated on one very generously timed compact disc. It was  last broadcast on Sunday, August 9, 1998.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  AUGUST 10th </strong> At this juncture the  summertime listening lineup requires something comic and Italian. The Rossini  that I love best is the young prodigy Rossini of the five one act <em>opere buffe</em>. If Mozart had lived into  the nineteenth century, I figure he might well have composed such comedic gems  as these. In 2005 Brilliant Classics came out with all of them in an eight-CD  boxed set. They were recorded between 1988 - 92 with Marcello Viotti  conducting. So far I have presented four of the five: <em>L'Occasione Fa Il Ladro</em> (1812) and <em>La Scala di Seta</em> (1812) on an August Sunday in 2006, and last year  in August,<em> La Cambiale di Matrimonio</em> (1810) and<em> L'Inganno Felice</em> (1812).  The one remaining is slightly longer in airplay than the others and takes up  two of the eight discs. I have broadcast <em>Il  Signior Brushchino </em>(1813) twice before over a quarter of a century of  summers. Most recently it was a Naxos CD recording with Claudio Desderi  directing I Virtuosi Italiani (Sunday, August 7, 2005). &quot;Mister  Bruschino&quot; falls into the subgenre of <em>farsa  grocosa,</em> meaning I guess it's crazier than the typical Italian <em>buffa</em> lyric comedy. Marcello Viotti  worked with two chamber orchestras. In recording <em>Il Signor Bruschino</em> it was I Filarmonici di Torino. Keep listening  to the voices of Beniamino Gigli, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Schipa, and Carlo  Bergonzi, as documented in historic recordings.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  AUGUST 17th</strong> Friedrich von Flotow's <em>Martha</em> (1847) was at one time one of the most popular operas in the  international repertoire. It's a delightful, tuneful work from start to finish:  even people who know nothing about Opera recognize the familiar melodies of  &quot;Ach, so fromm..&quot; and &quot;Letzte Rose,&quot; even better known in  its Irish incarnation as &quot;The Last Rose of Summer.&quot; Over a quarter  century of Opera broadcasting, believe it or not, I have never presented <em>Martha </em>before! I find it hard to believe  there are so few recordings of it. There was one made in 1944 during the  hellish days of the Third Reich in Nazi Berlin. It preserves a wonderful  performance, but its monaural sonics are horrible by today's standards. The  best one that has remained available over the years is the 1977 Eurodisc  recording. The original boxed set of three stereo LPs was reissued on two  Eurodisc CDs in 1989, then reissued a second time through BMG/RCA Classics.  Heinz Wallberg conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra and Chorus of Bavarian  Radio, in a broadcast performance, also captured on airtape, from the studios  of Radio Bavaria, Munich.</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  AUGUST 24th </strong>Like &quot;The Land of Smiles&quot; (1929), Franz Lehar's  operetta <em>Sch&ouml;n Ist Die Welt</em> (&quot;The World Is Beautiful,&quot; 1930) was written for the voice of  Austrian superstar tenor Richard Tauber. Lehar salvaged music from an earlier  production<em> Endlich Allein</em> (1914) for  &quot;The World Is Beautiful.&quot; In updating this new stage work he required  a particularly &quot;modern&quot; sound effect: the simulated radio broadcast  of a news report that figure is crucially in the operettas plot. A ringing  telephone and telephone conversations were interpolated into the spoken dialogue. There is preserved a 1942 radio  airtape of <em>Sch&ouml;n Ist Die Welt</em>,  recorded complete with dialogue, with Lehar himself conducting the Vienna  Philharmonic. After both Tauber and Lehar died in 1948, it was tenor Rudolf  Schock who carried on the singing traditions of the Viennese operetta. Schock  took the leading romantic male role in a March, 1954 broadcast of <em>Sch&ouml;n Ist Die Welt </em>over Bavarian Radio, Munich. Werner  Schmidt-Boelke directed Munich Radio Orchestra and Chorus. The monaural air  tape was digitally upgraded for CD release through the Walhall Eternity Classic  series in 2006</p>
            <p><strong>SUNDAY  AUGUST 31st </strong>This will be the seventh time over nearly three decades of  opera broadcasting when I will again be presenting the best-known opera of  Frederick Delius (1862 -- 1934) the one that is regarded as his masterpiece <em>A Village Romeo and Juliet </em>(1907). Every  year on the last Sunday of August I feature one of Delius' six operas, because  I believe his impressionistic musical style so beautifully evokes the lazy,  hazy end of summertime. Most recently, on Sunday, August 27, 2006 it was the  1989 Decca recording on two CDs, which is actually the soundtrack to the Petr  Weikl film version of the Opera, starring the photogenic baritone Thomas  Hampson as the Dark Fiddler. Sir Charles Mackerras directed the Orchestra of  ORF Austrian Radio. This Sunday for the fourth time I return to the 1973 EMI  recording, with Meredith Davies leading the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and  John Alldis Choir. First I worked from the two old Angell/EMI LPs, the original  stateside release. Then I presented the better quality vinyl reissue through  EMI in its HMV Greensleeve line. The reason for broadcasting <em>A Village Romeo and Juliet </em>so soon again  is that I have recently acquired the CD transfer of this wonderful recording  that came out in 2002 through EMI Classics. What makes the CD reissue a real  collector's item is Eric Fenby's twenty-seven minute &quot;Illustrated  Talk&quot; about the Delian style, with musical quotations from the great EMI  recording of Delius' music. As a young man Eric Fenby (1906 - 97) was Delius'  amanuensis in the final stage of the composer's career, when he was suffering  from syphilitic paralysis. Fenby's published memoir <em>Delius As I Knew Him</em> was the basis for Ken Russell's 1962 film <em>Song of Summer, </em>made for BBC Television.  Actor Max Adrian portrayed Delius. You'll get to hear the &quot;Illustrated  Talk,&quot; plus a recording of another Delius masterpiece for orchestra,  chorus, and baritone soloist,<em> Sea Drift </em>(1904).</p>
            <p>&nbsp; <strong>The majority of  recordings featured over these two months of summer programming are drawn from  my personal collection.</strong> From our station's record library I have selected  Flotow's <em>Martha</em>, Rossini's <em>Il Signor Bruschino</em> and Mareno-Torroba's <em>Luisa Fernanda</em>. The two song cycles,  Rorem's <em>Evidence of Things Not Seen </em>and  Ricky Ian Gordon's <em>Orpheus and Euridice</em>,  come on loan from the collection of Rob Meehan. Thanks go to him, as always  since he has loaned me so many fine recordings of contemporary lyric theater  music over the years. Thanks as well to Vickie Hadge of Virtually Done by  Vickie for the preparation of these programming notes for publication.</p>
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