CONCERT NOTES Evening at the Opera Gyro Masters Series September 14, 2013
Free Pre-Concert Talks Prior to Masters Series Concerts
Enhance Your Experience at the Symphony ATTEND THE PRE-CONCERT TALK Not sure about the music? Come early and get the inside scoop! Prior to each Masters Series concert, the SSO presents a Pre-Concert talk with informative and engaging conversations.
An expert presenter himself, Brian also invites other musicians and guest artists to add their insights about the evening’s program through interviews, performances, and lecture/demonstrations.
Brian Unverricht is our host for the first part of this season. Not only is Brian a long standing musician in our orchestra, he is widely recognized as a superb educator. The 2012 Sask. Music Education Conference honoured Brian with its ‘Director of Distinction’ award.
The talks begin at 6:55 pm and last about 25 minutes. Concertgoers are invited to drop in anytime during the conversation. Pre-concert talks are held in the TCU Place Green Room. Follow the signs or check for directions from an usher or at the SSO kiosk in the lobby. inTune 13
Photo: Trudy Janssens, Photography One 2 One
Gyro Masters Series September 14, 2013
MAESTRO VICTOR SAWA
WALLIS GIUNTA
JOHN BRANCY
Evening at the Opera - Classics for Skeptics TCU Place, Sid Buckwold Theatre, 7:30 pm
Maestro Victor Sawa conductor Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra John Brancy baritone Wallis Giunta mezzo-soprano Strauss Overture, Die Fledermaus Mozart Arias from Le Nozze di Figaro, K. 492:
The Gyro Masters Series is generously sponsored by
Presented by
“Crudel! Perchè fin’ora” Duo “Hai già vinta la causa” J. Brancy “Non so più” W. Giunta
Bizet Arias from Carmen:
“Toreador Song” J. Brancy
“Si tu m’aimes, Carmen” Duo “Seguidille” W. Giunta
Wagner Overture, Tannhäuser, WWV 70 intermission Weber Overture, Der Freischütz, J.277
Rossini Arias from Il Barbiere di Siviglia
“Dunque io son!” Duo “Largo al factotum” J. Brancy Una voce poco fa” W. Giunta
Borodin Polovtsian Dances, #17, Prince Igor
Pre-Concert Talk Learn about the music in tonight’s program. 6:55 pm – 7:20 pm, TCU Place Green Room. Free with concert ticket. inTune 14
John Brancy baritone
well as the lead role in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ new youth opera, Kommilitionen!. Baritone John Brancy has been hailed by Other recent roles include Aeneas in Dido The New York Times as “a vibrant, resonate & Aeneas, and Theseus in A Midsummer presence.” He is a 2013 George London Night’s Dream at the Juilliard School, and Foundation Encouragement Award Winner. Sid in Albert Herring with the Opera on the Avalon Festival. Mr. Brancy is a recent During the 2012–13 season, Mr. Brancy made winner of the Sullivan Foundation Grand his debut with the Dresden Semperoper, Prize and Career Grants, 1st Prize at the as Fiorello in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Classical Singer Magazine Competition, performed Mike in a new production of and the Gold Award for Voice at the John Adams’ I Was Looking at the Ceiling, YoungArts Foundation competition. He is a and Then I Saw the Sky with Paris’ Theatre 2nd Place winner in the Gerda Lissner and du Chatelet, and joined Juilliard Opera as Liederkranz competitions, and 3rd place Harasta in The Cunning Little Vixen. This sumwinner in the 2012 Montreal International mer, he performed the role of Papageno Music Competition. in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at the prestigious Music Academy of the West in Mr. Brancy completed his Graduate Santa Barbara. Diploma at the Juilliard School this past spring, where he also received his bachelors Future engagements bring him to the degree, under the tutelage of Edith Wiens. Glyndebourne Festival Opera Tour, Oper Frankfurt (Sonora in La fanciulla del West), Gotham Chamber Opera (Charpentier’s mezzo-soprano La descente d’Orphée aux Enfers), Pacific Hailed by The New York Times for her Opera Victoria (Harlekin in Ariadne auf “chocolaty and penetrating mezzo-soprano Naxos), and the symphony orchestras of voice,” Ottawa-native Wallis Giunta is a 2013 Boston and San Francisco. graduate of both the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development While still an undergraduate student at Program, and The Juilliard School’s Artist The Juilliard School, Mr. Brancy made his Diploma in Opera Studies. She has been Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall debuts praised by OPERA NEWS for her “delectably as the baritone soloist in Fauré’s Requiem, rich, silver-toned mezzo-soprano, with a Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Schubert’s Mass beautiful sense of line and effortless rapid in G, amongst other notable works. He has given recitals throughout Europe and North runs,” and her jump-in last season as Mozart’s Sesto for the Canadian Opera America, and has appeared frequently in Company (COC) was celebrated as “a concert with New York Festival of Song, including several concerts at the Caramoor triumph...remarkable in its combination of Festival. He was also the winner of the 2010 intelligence and beauty.” Juilliard School Honors Recital Competition. Miss Giunta begins the 2013–14 season with In 2011, he made his Alice Tully Hall Songfest her debut for the Taipei Symphony debut, collaborating with Brian Zeger. Orchestra as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito, Recently, he sang Handel’s Messiah with followed by a return to the Metropolitan the Charleston Symphony and performed Opera for Rigoletto. She then heads home in recital with the renowned Hugo Wolf to the COC for Dorabella in Atom Egoyan’s Akademie in Stuttgart, Germany. new production of Cosí fan tutte, and makes her debut NAXOS recording in a new work During the 2011–12 season with Juilliard by American composer, William Perry, with Opera, Mr. Brancy sang the role of Slook the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in in Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio, Dublin. This season she also debuts with covered the title role in Don Giovanni, as inTune 15
Wallis Giunta
the Toronto and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras, and performs concerts and recitals in Toronto, New York, Ottawa, Regina, and Boston, along with her acclaimed programme of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins in Miami, with pianist Ken Noda.
Maestro Victor Sawa conductor Victor Sawa is a triple threat of talent, experience and personal dynamism. Music Director of the SSO, he holds similar positions with orchestras in Sudbury and Regina. He was previously Resident Conductor with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (19931997), Music Director with the North Bay Symphony, the Guelph Youth Orchestra and the Kitchener-Waterloo Orchestra. He also served as Principal Clarinet with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. He has guest conducted for orchestras across the country.
Giunta had a whirlwind 2012/13 season, while still completing her studies, making her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, debuting the role of Annio in La Clemenza di Tito with the COC, presenting her Seven Deadly Sins recital for the first time at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, and performing Victor has been the recipient of many Dorabella in the Metropolitan Opera awards and honours, including three Lindemann Young Artist production of Canada Council awards for Conducting, a Cosí fan tutte, to rave reviews. She also Grand Prix du Disque—Best Chamber Music made debuts with L’Opéra de Montréal, Recording (Canadian Chamber Ensemble), the Edmonton, Seville and Nuremberg a Grammy award (with the New England Symphonies, the Stuttgart Festivalorchester, and the orchestras of the Ragtime Ensemble), and the Tanglewood National Arts Centre (Ottawa) and Munich Festival award for Outstanding Musician. Radio. This past June, she made her Paris A Montreal native, Sawa holds a Bachelor debut with Le Théâtre du Châtelet as of Music with Distinction from McGill Tiffany in John Adams’s rarely-performed University and an Honours Masters of opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then Music Performance from the New England I Saw the Sky, followed by a July recital of Conservatory of Music. He is also a Barber, Wolf and Respighi with the Miró graduate of the Pierre Monteux School for Quartet, for the Ottawa International Advanced Conductors. In 2011, Victor Sawa Chamber Music Festival. was appointed Honorary Consul for Japan in Saskatchewan. In recent seasons she has performed with Fort Worth Opera, Opera Lyra Ottawa, Toronto’s Opera Atelier, the New York (1825–1899) Festival of Song, the festivals of Caramoor, Ravinia and Aspen, and at the Banff Centre. OVERTURE, DIE FLEDERMAUS Her past roles include Cherubino in Le Johann Strauss wrote 16 operettas, one of Nozze di Figaro, Hermia in A Midsummer the most famous being Die Fledermaus Night’s Dream, Nancy in Albert Herring, (Vienna, 1874). Written for Strauss’ first wife, Ernesto in Il Mondo Della Luna, Lola in with a libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Cavalleria Rusticana, and Second Lady in Genée, it is the story of Eisenstein, who The Magic Flute. She is a graduate of abandoned his drunken friend Falke Toronto’s Glenn Gould School (2009), and (dressed in a bat costume, hence the title an alumnus of the Canadian Opera The Bat) and exposed him to ridicule, and Company Ensemble Studio (2011). Ms. Falke’s plan to get even. Full of ebullient Giunta is a grateful recipient of a 2012 Sylva music that evokes Viennese nightlife of the Gelber Music Foundation Career period, the opera is a comedy of errors, rife Development Award, as well as multiple with mistaken identities and disguises. grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Composer Richard Strauss (no relation, but
Johann Strauss, Jr.
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a huge fan) wrote: “Of all the God-gifted dispensers of joy, Johann Strauss is to me the most endearing . . . and enduring.”
W.A. Mozart (1756–1791) Arias from Le Nozze dI Figaro Mozart’s comic opera Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, Vienna, 1786) is based on the second of the Figaro trilogy of plays written by the French inventor, watchmaker, music teacher, diplomat, revolutionary, and spy, Pierre Beaumarchais. The play was banned in Vienna but librettist Da Ponte toned down the more political and risqué elements and got approval for an operatic version.
Figaro, Susanna, and the Countess expose the Count’s scheming, Figaro and Susanna are allowed to marry, and the Countess rekindles their old romance by forgiving the Count. In the aria “Crudel! Perchè fin’ora” Susanna, at the Countess’ urging, promises to meet the Count in the garden. In “Hai già vinta la causa” the count realizes he is being tricked and declares he will get his revenge on Figaro. In “Non so più,” Cherubino, a page with a crush on Countess Rosina, describes his infatuation with all women. The Marriage of Figaro is an opera of wit and complexity, humour and humanity, love and forgiveness.
Georges Bizet (1838–1875)
Figaro wants to marry Susanna, Countess Arias from carmen Rosina’s maid, but Count Almaviva is deterBizet’s opera comique Carmen (Paris, 1875) mined to seduce her. Through manipulais based on a novella by Prosper tions, disguises, and mistaken identities, inTune 17
Mérimée with libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Unfortunately, Bizet died before it became evident what a popular success the opera would become. It tells the story of Don José, a soldier seduced by the gypsy Carmen. Don José is imprisoned for allowing Carmen to escape as he escorts her to jail. He then deserts the army for her but she falls in love with the toreador Escamillo instead. Don José kills Carmen in a jealous rage. In the final act of the opera, at the bullfighting arena, Escamillo and Carmen express their love for each other in “Si tu m’aimes, Carmen”. “Toreador Song” is among the best known opera arias. Sung by Escamillo, it describes the bullring, the bullfight, the cheering crowds, and the fame that comes with victory. The “Seguidilla” uses rhythms and instrumentation associated with flamenco music.
Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
come and say the Pope’s staff has sprouted leaves; Tannhäuser has his redemption. The Overture weaves together elements of the opera: the pilgrim’s chorus (written in the style of J.S. Bach), Venus’ siren song, Tannhäuser’s song to Venus, and the revelries of Venusberg. During Wagner’s lifetime Tannhäuser was not, even after many revisions, the success Wagner had hoped. Weeks before Wagner’s death his wife Cosima wrote in her diary that Wagner felt he “still owed Tannhäuser to the world.”
Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) OVERTURE, Der Freischütz Der Freischütz (Berlin, 1821) helped define the themes and characters of German Romantic opera (exalting nature, a fascination with the supernatural, the struggle between good and evil) and influenced a generation of German composers, especially Wagner. In the
OVERTURE, Tannhäuser Wagner wrote both the text and music for Tannhäuser (Dresden, 1845). Set in 13th century Thuringia and based on the German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg, the opera explores the themes of lust, love, and redemption. Tannhäuser spends a year as Venus’s lover then invokes the name of the Virgin Mary and returns to Wartburg and the mortal Elizabeth, who loves him. After being taunted into singing the praises of Venus at a singing contest, the other knights draw swords on Tannhäuser but Elizabeth protects him. Tannhäuser journeys to Rome to seek forgiveness from the Pope for his time spent with Venus, but the pontiff tells him he has less chance of being forgiven than the Pope’s staff of sprouting leaves. In despair, Tannhäuser contemplates returning to Venus. Elizabeth dies of grief while waiting for Tannhäuser’s return from Rome. Tannhäuser sees Elizabeth’s coffin, falls to his knees, and dies. Young pilgrims
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opera, which uses the Faust legend, the young huntsman Max must prove his worth in a shooting trial before he can marry his beloved Agathe. Afraid he will fail, Max goes to the haunted Wolfglen at midnight and gets magic bullets from the evil Zamiel, who ensnares souls. The “Overture” from Der Freischütz is a miniature tone poem that musically depicts the entire opera complete with sylvan hunting music, the menace of Wolfglen, storms of despair, and Max’s ultimate triumph. This overture is one of Weber’s most popular orchestral works.
will be hers, no matter what tricks she must play to outwit Bartolo. Rossini wrote this opera in just under three weeks when he was 24 years old. Some of the music from The Barber of Seville was used in the Looney Tunes production “The Rabbit of Seville” in 1949.
Alexander Borodin (1833–1887) Polovtsian dances, #17, Prince Igor
Borodin, by profession a research chemist, spent 18 years off and on composing Prince Igor (St. Petersburg, 1890) but died before he finished it. Borodin’s friends (1792–1868) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Arias from Glazunov completed the opera. Borodin Il barbiere di siviglia based the libretto on the medieval Rossini’s opera buffa Il Barbiere di Siviglia poem Song of the Army of Prince Igor. The (The Barber of Seville, Rome, 1816) was nomadic Polovtsi tribe overrun Prince based on the first play of the Figaro Igor’s city, and he and his son Vladimir trilogy written by Pierre Beaumarchais, are captured in battle. The Polovtsi khan with the libretto by Cesare Sterbini. treats his royal prisoners well. He enterThough written 30 years after Mozart’s tains them with dancers, which is the Marriage of Figaro, Barber tells the presection of the opera from which these quel story of Figaro, Rosina, and Count “Polovtsian Dances” come. In the end Igor Almaviva. Rossini’s comic opera is full of escapes but Vladimir, in love with the wit, comedy, and intrigue. The young khan’s daughter, remains behind. Almaviva is in love with Rosina, the ward Borodin’s research into the melodies of Dr. Bartolo, but Dr. Bartolo intends and rhythms of the folk music of Russia’s to marry her. Through the use of tricks, eastern nomads provided him with letters, and disguises, Figaro, Almaviva, the musical ideas for the “Polovtsian and Rosina convince Dr. Bartolo to allow Dances”. They were first performed in Rosina to marry Almaviva. 1879, at the request of Rimsky-Korsakov, In “Dunque io son!” Figaro asks Rosina before the rest of the opera was comto write a note to encourage Lindoro pleted. The Broadway musical Kismet (Almaviva in disguise), who has been uses music from the “Polovtsian Dances” singing to her. In the aria “Largo al in three of its songs. factotum” Figaro sings about how he is Program notes prepared by Joan Savage, a master of all trades and an excellent member, Violin section, Saskatoon Symphony. barber. In “Una voce poco fa” Rosina © 2013 sings that Lindoro (Almaviva in disguise)
Gioachino Rosinni
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