Western Health Advantage Season of Performing Arts
THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2017 Jackson Hall, UC Davis
Michael Fabiano, tenor Laurent Philippe, piano
RO B ERT A N D M A RG RI T
MONDAVI CENTER
FO R T H E PERFO R M I N G A RTS PRES EN TS
MICHAEL FABIANO, tenor LAURENT PHILIPPE, piano MONDAVI CENTER PRESENTING PROGRAM Thursday, April 6, 2017 • 8 pm Jackson Hall, UC Davis Individual support provided by Barbara K. Jackson Mentia l’avviso
Puccini
Inno a Diana Terra e mare Canto d’anime Lamento Duparc Le manoir de Rosemonde Extase Phidylé “Nè pouvant réprimer … Adieu donc, vains objets”
Massenet
from Hérodiade INTERMISSION I baci
Toscanini
Donna vorrei morir Spes, ultima dea Il pescatore Presentimenti “Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis” from Eugene Onégin, Op. 24 Three Songs, Op. 10
Tchaikovsky Barber
Rain Has Fallen Sleep now I Hear an Army The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.
MICHAEL FABIANO, TENOR
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Four Songs Giacomo Puccini Born December 22, 1858 in Lucca. Died November 29, 1924 in Brussels.
Mentìa l’avviso, composed in 1883 in fulfillment of Puccini’s graduation requirements for the Milan Conservatory, sets a passage from La Solitaria delle Asturie, an old libretto on a Moorish theme by Felice Romani (1788–1865), who provided operatic texts for Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Verdi; L’elisir d’amore, Norma and La Sonnambula are his best known creations. The last portion of this scena is occupied by a splendid melody that Puccini later borrowed for Des Grieux’s aria Donna non vidi mai in Manon Lescaut, the opera that made his reputation when it was premiered in Turin in 1893. Puccini described himself as “a passionate hunter of waterfowl, good libretti, fast cars and beautiful women,” and built himself a lovely villa on Lake Massaciuccoli, near his native Lucca, where he could observe ducks landing and try to resist the temptation to practice his skill with a shotgun on them. In 1897, he wrote Inno a Diana to a text by his friend Carlo Abeniacar—an author, poet, photo-journalist and fellow hunter—that was a hymn to the Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon, forests and animals. (She is also referred to in Abeniacar’s poem as Cynthia, after the mountain on Delos on which legend has it she was born.) Puccini dedicated the song to his hunting companions in the Fraternità Cacciatori Italiani and published it in a special 1899 issue of the magazine Sant’Uberto, named for the patron saint of the sport. Terra e mare (“Earth and Sea”) was Puccini’s contribution to the 1902 edition of Novissima, Edoardo de Fonseca’s “Annual Album of Arts and Letters ... by Italy’s most original contemporary artists, composers and leading literary figures.” That year’s topic was the sea, and Puccini chose as the text for his song a poetic reverie by the respected Bolognese critic, writer, orator, lecturer, art historian, educator and ardent Wagnerian Enrico Panzacchi. Commercial audio recording began to flourish soon after Thomas Edison patented his phonograph in 1878, and it had become a mature industry by the time Puccini signed a contract to write a song for the Gramophone Company (Italy) Ltd. in April 1903, which the firm’s director, Alfred Michaelis, hoped Caruso would record. Luigi Illica, who collaborated with Giuseppe Giacosa on the librettos for La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, supplied a new text for the song, but Puccini had recently been injured in an automobile accident and he was unable to deliver the piece—Canto d’anime (“Song of the Souls”)—for over a year. Canto d’anime (which was not recorded until 1907, by the dramatic soprano Ida Giacomelli) served as a model for Rinuccio’s civic-minded aria Firenze è come un albero fiorito
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(“Florence is like a tree in blossom”) in Puccini’s 1918 Gianni Schicchi. Four Songs Henri Duparc Born January 21, 1848 in Paris. Died February 12, 1933 in Mont-de-Marsan.
Duparc, born in Paris in 1848, studied piano and, later, composition privately at the Collège du Vaugiraud with César Franck, who regarded Henri as his most talented pupil. Duparc’s formal training was for a career in law, but the lure of music was too strong for him, and he had begun composing in earnest by 1868, when five of his songs appeared in print. After a pilgrimage to hear Die Walküre and Tristan in Munich, where he met both Wagner and Franz Liszt, Duparc devoted himself to a musical career. He became secretary of the new Société Nationale, founded by Saint-Saëns to promote French music after the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, which premiered his orchestral Suite de Valses and three-movement Poème nocturne in 1874. (He later destroyed the Poème’s second and third movements; only Aux étoiles remains.) The Société gave his tone poem Lénore, after Burger’s ballad, the following year. During the next decade, Duparc worked on an opera based on Pushkin’s Roussalka, which he never completed and whose drafts he eventually destroyed, and added several more numbers to his collection of songs. In 1885, he suddenly stopped composing after suffering a breakdown occasioned by what Martin Cooper described in his article on Duparc in the New Grove’s Dictionary as ”a neurasthenic condition [nervous debility and exhaustion], no doubt of physical origin but predominantly psychological in its manifestations of crippling hyperaesthesia [an abnormally acute sense of pain, heat, cold or touch].” Duparc never composed another note. He withdrew into a quiet life with his wife and family, tried rest cures in Switzerland and southern France, read, painted, listened to music, grew devoutly religious, and eventually became blind and paralyzed. He died at Mont-de-Marsan, in southeastern France, in 1933, nearly 50 years after composing his last song; he was 85. Lamento (1883), set to a mournful text about a lost love by the 19th-century French poet, novelist and critic Theóphile Gautier, was dedicated to Gabriel Fauré and exhibits much of that composer’s subtlety and introspection until the song’s anguished closing lines. Le manoir de Rosemonde (“Rosemonde’s Manor”), composed in 1879 and orchestrated in 1912, sets a text by the Parisian novelist, journalist and poet Robert de Bonnières (1850–1905), a close friend with whom Duparc once shared an apartment. The poem, which had just been published in Bonnières’ Contes de fées (“Fairy Tales”), tells of a feverish quest to find the refuge of love in the cryptic “blue do-
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main of Rosemonde,” perhaps a reference to the beautiful Rosamund Clifford, mistress of King Henry II of England (1133–1189), who lost his beloved when she had to enter a nunnery after their liaison became public knowledge, shortly before her death in 1176. Numerous legends sprang up around “The Fair Rosamund,” and she was the subject of a poem by Apollinaire that was set by Poulenc. Duparc’s dramatic song mirrors the wild hunting images in the poem’s first part and the sullen disillusion of the failed pursuit that follows. Extase (“Ecstasy,” 1874) is a setting of a poem by Jean Lahor (pseudonym of Henri Cazalis [1840–1909], whose poetry also served as the catalyst for Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre) that seems almost rapt out of earthly time. The nobility, restraint and unruffled spirit of Phidylé, composed in 1882 and dedicated to Duparc’s fellow composer Ernest Chausson, perfectly matched the poem by Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894), the Parnassian poet who sought to embody exactly such qualities in his verses. Nè pouvant réprimer … Adieu donc, vains objets (“Since They Could Not Repress … Farewell, Then, Vain Things”) from Hérodiade (“Herodias”) (1878–1881) Jules Massenet Born May 12, 1842 in Montaud, France. Died August 13, 1912 in Paris.
Royal Conservatory (now the Conservatorio di Musica “Arrigo Boito,” named in honor of the composer of Mefistofele, librettist of Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, and briefly the institution’s director). Two years later he was admitted to the school’s professional curriculum and studied theory, cello, singing, piano and, with the prolific composer and demanding teacher Giusto Dacci, composition. Toscanini was sufficiently advanced as a cellist to be allowed to sit in occasionally with the orchestra of Parma’s Teatro Regio, and in 1884, a year before his graduation, he participated as composer, conductor and cellist in a student concert in the theater’s lobby, leading two of his own orchestral pieces. In all, Toscanini wrote some three dozen works while he was a student, including pieces for orchestra and for chamber ensembles and 19 songs, several of which were published. His interest in composition began to wane after the left the Parma Conservatory in 1885, first undermined when he made his professional conducting debut—successfully replacing an ailing conductor for Aida in Buenos Aires on June 30, 1886, while he was serving as principal cellist and assistant chorus master with a touring opera company— and dealt a final blow in 1888, when he first heard the epochal music of Richard Wagner in person at a performance of Tristan und Isolde in Bologna. “It is criminal to continue writing music, wasting more paper, paper that would be put to better use wrapping sausages!” he said, and vowed henceforth to devote himself to conducting.
Hérodiade, based on Flaubert’s novella, treats the ancient story of the Roman tetrarch Herod and his lust for his step-daughter Salome, the child of his second wife, the opera’s titular Herodias. In Massenet’s version, Salome has fallen into a chaste love with John the Baptist, who prophesies the advent of the Messiah (and trouble for the Roman occupiers). Herod condemns John to death both for his subversive political activities and for the love he has inspired in Salome that has fixed her resolve to thwart the tetrarch’s advances. In the aria Nè pouvant réprimer … Adieu donc, vains objets (“Since they could not repress the power of Thy Truth, their impotent rage has struck at Thy prophet—Farewell, Then, Vain Things”), John, in prison at the beginning of Act IV, takes leave of his life and his mission, and of “that child”—Salome—who has aroused affection in him.
Toscanini’s handful of instrumental and vocal works are what could be expected from a brilliantly gifted, welltrained Italian music student of his day—richly lyrical, conservative in technique, up-to-date but not daring in harmony and rhythm. Such individuality as they may possess is limited to a few piquant harmonic touches and a distinct preference for song texts inspired by lost or unrequited love, completely understandable sentiments from a passionate teenager just finding his way in life.
Five Songs (mid-1880s) Arturo Toscanini
In Tchaikovsky’s masterful opera, the young and worldly Eugene Onégin arouses love for himself in Tatiana, a gentle country girl. She innocently writes him a letter revealing her feelings, to which Onégin haughtily replies that the best he can offer her is brotherly affection. At a ball in honor of Tatiana’s name-day, Onégin deliberately inflames the jealousy of the poet Lensky by flirting with Olga, Lensky’s fiancée and Tatiana’s sister, and Lensky challenges him to a duel. As Lensky waits for the confrontation at dawn the following day, he reflects on the folly of his brief life (Kuda,
Born March 25, 1867 in Parma, Italy. Died January 16, 1957 in New York City.
Though Arturo Toscanini built a reputation as one of the dominant conductors of the early 20th century, he also exhibited talent at the outset of his career as a cellist and composer. Toscanini was born in Parma in 1867 and began his formal music education when he was 9 at the city’s
Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis (“Where have you gone, golden days of my youth?”) from Eugene Onégin, op. 24 (1877–1878) Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia. Died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg.
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kuda, kuda vi udalilis—“Where have you gone, golden days of my youth?”), saddened by what now seems to be his unalterable destiny, and imagines his beloved Olga visiting his grave. Onégin arrives, the duel is fought, and Lensky is fatally shot. Three Songs, op. 10 (1935-1936) Samuel Barber Born March 9, 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Died January 23, 1981 in New York City.
Samuel Barber’s four dozen songs extend across the whole of his career, from A Slumber Song of the Madonna, written when he was 15, to the Three Songs, op. 45 of 1972, his next-to-last completed work. They distill the essence of his art—its lyricism, precise contrapuntal interplay, warmth of harmony, and exquisite sensitivity to the written word. Barber’s Three Songs, op. 10 (Rain Has Fallen, Sleep Now and I Hear an Army), written in 1935–1936 to texts from James Joyce’s Chamber Music (1907, Joyce’s first published work), are exactly contemporary with his Adagio for Strings, and, though very different in mood and manner, share with that masterwork an uncanny ability to create both a carefully sculpted expressive world and a sure sense of musical line. Rain Has Fallen is a haunting evocation of Joyce’s somber land of memory. The beatific calm of Sleep Now is set into expressive relief by the troubled implications of the middle stanza’s winter of the soul. I Hear an Army powerfully limns the war-like images of Joyce’s verses. ©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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Puccini: Four Songs Mentìa l’avviso (“The warning was false”) Text: Felice Romani Mentìa l’avviso … Eppur d’ Ausena è questa L’angusta valle … E qui fatal dimora Mi presagiva La segreta voce Che turba da più notti Il mio riposo …
The warning was false … And yet, this is the narrow Valley of Ausena … And here the fatal abode, The place that The secret voice portended, A voice that for many nights Disturbed my rest …
Tu cui nomar non oso, Tu! funestra donna, Dall’avel risorta Per mio supplizio, Un’altra volta ancora Promettesti vedermi … E in rio momento. Ah! chi geme? M’inganno … È l’onda, è il vento.
You, whom I dare not name, You, woeful woman, Resurrected from the tomb At my entreaty, You swore You would see me once again … In an evil moment. Ah! Who is moaning? I am mistaken … it is just the sound Of a wave, it is the wind.
È la notte che mi reca Le sue larve, i suoi timori, Che gli accenti punitori Del rimorso udir mi fa. È la notte che il rimorso Udir mi fa. È la notte che mi reca …
It is the night Which brings me Its ghosts, its fears, And makes me hear accusing words Of remorse. And makes me hear accusing words. It is the night which brings me … Inno a Diana (“Hymn to Diana”) Text: Carlo Abeniacar
Gloria a te, se alle notti silenti offri, o Cinzia, i bei raggi all’amor, gloria a te, se ai meriggi cocenti tempri, o Diana, dei forti il valor. Sui tuoi baldi e fedeli seguaci veglia sempre con l’occhio divin; tu li guida alle imprese più audaci, li sorreggi nell’aspro cammin. Dalle vette dell’Alpe nevose fino ai lidi del siculo mar; per i campi e le selve più ombrose, dove amavi le fiere incontrar; sovra i laghi, ove baciano l’onda le corolle di candidi fior, giunga a te, come un’eco gioconda, questo fervido canto d’amor!
Glory to you, o Cynthia, if in the silence of night you offer your fair beams of light to love, glory to you, o Diana, if on sultry afternoons you temper the valor of the strong. Keep a divine and everlasting watch over your brave and faithful followers; lead them onwards to ever greater feats, sustain them on their challenging path. From the snowy peaks of the Alps to the shores of the Sicilian Strait; across field and through darkest forest, whose wild beasts you loved to encounter; over lakes, whose waters are kissed by the petals of snow-white flowers, may this heartfelt song of love reach you like a joyful echo!
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Terra e mare (“Earth and Sea”) Text: Enrico Panzacchi I pioppi, curvati dal vento, Rimugghiano in lungo filare. Dal buio, tra il sonno, li sento E sogno la voce del mar.
The long rows of poplars, bent by the wind, Are roaring again. In the darkness, half asleep, I hear them And I dream of the voice of the sea.
E sogno la voce profonda Dai placidi ritmi possenti; Mi guardan, specchiate dall’onda, Le stelle nel cielo fulgenti.
And I dream of the deep voice With its peaceful, mighty rhythms; Reflected in the wave, the stars shining in the sky Are looking at me.
Ma il vento più forte tempesta, De’ pioppi nel lungo filare, Dal sonno giocondo mi desta... Lontana è la voca del mar!
But the wind rages louder Through the row of poplars, It wakes me from my joyous sleep... Distant is the voice of the sea! Canto d’anime (“Song of the Souls”) Text: Luigi Illica (1857–1919)
Fuggon gli anni, gli inganni e le chimere, cadon recisi i fiori e le speranze, in vane e tormentose distanze svaniscon le mie brevi primavere; ma vive e canta ancora forte e solo nelle notti del cuore un ideale, siccome in alta notte siderale, inneggia solitario l’usignolo. Canta, canta ideal tu solo forte e dalle brume audace eleva il vol lassù, a sfidar l’oblio, l’odio, la morte, dove non son tenèbre e tutto è sol!
Years, illusions and fantasies fade, flowers are plucked and hopes dashed, my brief spring-times vanish into the haunting, tormenting distance; but deep in the night-time of the heart, an ideal lives on and sings, alone but powerful, just as in the midst of a starlit night the solitary nightingale sings its song of praise. Sing, sing, o ideal, powerful and alone, and dare to let your voice soar above the mist, rising up to defy oblivion, hatred and death, where darkness is banished and all is sun!
Duparc: Four Songs Lamento Text: Théophile Gautier (1811–1872)
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Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe Où flotte avec un son plaintif L’ombre d’un if? Sur l’if une pâle colombe, Triste et seule au soleil couchant, Chante son chant.
Do you know the white tomb where, with plaintive sound, waves the shadow of a yew tree? Upon the yew a pale dove, sad and lonely in the setting sun, sings its song.
On dirait que l’âme éveillée Pleure sous terre à l’unisson De la chanson, Et du malheur d’être oubliée Se plaint dans un roucoulement, Bien doucement. Ah! Jamais plus près de la tombe, Je n’irai, quand descend le soir
One feels as if the awakened soul weeps beneath the ground in unison with the song, and with unhappiness at being forgotten laments, with a cooing sound, very softly. Ah, never again shall I go near the tomb,
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Au manteau noir, Écouter la pâle colombe Chanter, sur la branche de l’if Son chant plaintif!
when the black-mantled evening falls, to listen to the pale dove sing, on the yew tree’s branch, its plaintive song! Le Manoir de Rosamonde Text: Robert de Bonnieres
De sa dent soudaine et vorace, Comme un chien l’amour m’a mordu ... En suivant mon sang répandu, Va, tu pourras suivre ma trace ...
With its sudden and voracious fang Like a dog love has bitten me. Following my spilled blood Go, you will be able to follow my trail.
Prends un cheval de bonne race, Pars, et suis mon chemin ardu, Fondrière ou sentier perdu, Si la course ne te harasse!
Take a horse of good breed Go, and follow my arduous road Marshy bog or lost path, If the ride doesn’t exhaust you.
En passant par où j’ai passé, Tu verras que seul et blessé J’ai parcouru ce triste monde. Et qu’ainsi je m’en fus mourir Bien loin, bien loin, sans découvrir Le bleu manoir de Rosamonde.
In passing where I have passed You will see that alone and wounded I have traveled this sad world And that thus I went off to die. Far away, far away, without discovering The blue manor of Rosamund. Extase (“Ecstasy”) Text: Jean Lahor
Sur un lys pâle mon coeur dort D’un sommeil doux comme la mort ... Mort exquise, mort parfumée Du souffle de la bien-aimée ... Sur ton sein pâle mon coeur dort D’un sommeil doux comme la mort ...
Upon a pale lily my heart sleeps in a drowsiness peaceful as death ... an exquisite death, a death scented with the beloved’s breath ... Upon your pale breast my heart sleeps in a drowsiness peaceful as death ... Phidylé Text: Leconte de Lisle
L’herbe est molle au sommeil The grass is soft for sleep sous les frais peupliers, beneath the cool poplars, Aux pentes des sources moussues On the banks of the mossy springs Qui, dans les prés en fleur germant That flow in flowering meadows par milles issues, from a thousand sources, Se perdent sous les noirs halliers. And vanish beneath dark thickets. Repose, O phidle! Midid sur les feuillages Rest, O Phidylé! Noon on the leaves Rayonne, et t’inviteau sommeil. Is gleaming, inviting you to sleep. Pare le tréfle et le thym, seules, By the clover and thyme, alone, en plein soleil, in the bright sunlight, Chantent les abeilles volages. The fickle bees are humming.
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Un chaud parfum circule A warm fragrance floats au détour des sentiers; about the winding paths, La rouge fleur des blé s’incline; The red cornflower tilts; Et les oiseaux, rasant de l’aile la colline, The red birds, skimming the hillside with their wings, Cherchent l’ombre des églantiers. Seek the shade of the eglantine. Mais quand l’Astre, But when the sun, incliné sur sa courbe éclatante, low on its dazzling curve, Verra ses ardeurs s’apaiser, Sees it brilliance wane, Que ton plus beau sourire Let your loveliest smile et ton meilleur baiser and finest kiss Me récompensent de l’attenéte! Reward me for my waiting. Massenet: “Nè pouvant réprimer” from Hérodiade Text: Paul Milliet Nè pouvant réprimer les élans de la foi, Since they could not repress the power of Thy Truth, Leur impuissante rage a frappé ton prophète. their impotent rage has struck at Thy prophet, Seigneur! ta volonté soit faite, O Lord! Thy will be done. Je me repose en toi! I trust in Thee! Adieu donc, vains objets Qui nous charment sur terre. Salut! Salut! Premiers rayons de l’immortalité! L’infini m’appelle et m’éclaire; Je meurs pour la justice et pour la liberté! Je ne regrette rien de ma prison d’argile, Fuyant l’humanité, Je vais calme et tranquille, M’envelopper d’éternité! Je ne regrette rien, Et pourtant ... ô faiblesse! Je songe à cette enfant. Je songe à cette enfant Dont les traits radieux Sont toujors présents à mes yeux, Souvenir qui m’oppresse! Souvenir qui m’oppresse toujours ... Je songe à cette enfant! Seigneur! si je suis ton fils, Seigneur! si je suis ton fils, Dis-moi pourquoi, Dis-moi pourquoi, Tu souffres que l’amour Vienne ébranler ma foi? Seigneur! si je suis ton fils! Si je suis ton fils! O Seigneur! O Seigneur!
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Farewell, then, vain things of earthly charm. Hail! Hail! first rays of immortality. The infinite calls me, and lights my way. I die for justice and for liberty! I do not regret this prison of clay, for when I leave this humanity to find calm and tranquility, I shall be clothed in eternity. I do not regret anything, yet, such is my weakness, I dream of that child. I dream of that child whose radiant features are present to my eyes. Her memory weighs upon me. Her memory weighs upon me always … Ever do I dream of her! O Lord! I am your son, O Lord! I am your son, Tell me why, Tell me why, Why do you permit love to come to me and disturb my faith? O Lord! Yes, I am your son! Yes, I am your son! O Lord! O Lord!
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Toscanini: Five Songs I baci (“Kisses”) Text: Alfio Belluso Posa sul sen fra i palpiti, Posa, o mia bella, il viso, Non han la terra e gli esseri, Non han d’amor tal riso; A noi d’intorno olezzano Serti di gemme e fior.
Rest on my beating heart, Rest, o my beautiful, your face. Earth has no creature more beautiful, Love has no such splendor; To us, surrounded with fragrance Garlanded with buds and flowers.
Posa il tuo labbro roseo, Posa sul labbro mio; Di voluttade inebbriami, Baciami, io tutto oblio; Forte ti stringo, e rompermi Sento d’ebbrezza il cor.
Rest your red lips, Rest them on mine; Intoxicated by the pleasure, Kiss me, all is oblivion. I clasp you tightly, and I Feel my heart burst with joy.
Taci, che quell’ armonica Favella più m’accende; Muto, tremante e languido Questo pensier mi rende; Baciami, o cara, e lasciami Di voluttà morir.
Be quiet, for those harmonious Words inflame me more; Speechless, trembling and languid This thought makes me; Kiss me my darling, and let me Die from sensual pleasure.
Sol fra’ tuoi baci teneri Sento che ho sangue e vita; Voglio succhiarti il fervido Spirto, e nell’infìnita Soavità confondermi Sì, de’ tuoi dolci sospir.
Only amidst your tender kisses Do I feel I have blood and life; I want to draw from you The ardent Spirit, and with the infinite Gentleness of your sweet sighs, Yes, become as one.
Donna vorrei morir (“Woman, I Should Like to Die”) Text: Lorenzo Stecchetti (psedonym of Olindo Guerrini) Donna vorrei morir, ma confortato Dall’onesto tuo amor, Sentirmi almeno una sol volta amato Senza averne rossor.
Woman, I should like to die, but comforted By the honesty of your love; To feel loved at least once Without feeling shame.
Vorrei poterti dar quel po’ che resta Della mia gioventù, Sovra l’omero tuo piegar la testa E non destarmi più.
I should like to give you what remains Of my youth; Rest my head on your shoulder And never wake again.
Spes, ultima dea (“Spes, the Last Goddess”) [in Roman mythology, Spes is the goddess of hope] Text: Lorenzo Stecchetti (psedonym of Olindo Guerrini) Ho detto al cor, al mio povero cor: — Perchè questo sconforto questo languor? — Ed egli m’ha risposto: — È morto amor! —
I said to my heart, to my poor heart, — Why this dejection, this languor? — And it answered: — Love is dead. —
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Ho detto al cor, al mio povero cor: — Perchè dunque sperar se amor è morto? — Ed egli m’ha risposto: — Chi non spera, muor.
I said to my heart, to my poor heart, — Why hope then, if love is dead? — And it answered, — He who hopes not, dies.
Il pescatore (“The Fisherman”) Text: Anonymous D’un vago fiume al margine s’assise un pescator Guardando all’esca turgida ridente a baldo in cor. Ma in quella un fiero vortice il flutto disunì Ed una bionda vergine fuor dall’onda uscì.
On the bank of a fair river sat an angler, Looking at the succulent bait with confident heart. But suddenly a strong whirlpool stirred the waters And a blond maiden arose from the waves.
A che con arti perfide così dicea: Vuoi tu attrar a morte barbara la mia gentil tribù A se sapessi i gaudi che ha il pesciolin quaggiù here, Con noi vorresti scendere per non venir più su. return.
Then with treacherous art she said: You want to draw to cruel death my gentle kind. Ah, if only you knew the joy the little fish has down You would want to come down with us, and never
Presentimenti (“Forbodings”) Text: Antonio Ghislanzoni Io ti chieggo se m’ami, e mi rispondi Io t’amo, t’amo assai. Io ti chieggo se sempre m’amerai Tu taci e il viso ascondi.
I ask if you love me and you reply I love very much. I ask if you will always love me You are silent and hide your face.
De’ tuoi silenzi o dolce mia fanciulla Il triste arcan io scerno. Tu sai che m’ami e sai che al par del nulla Avvi quaggiù d’eterno.
From your silence my sweet lady I understand the sad reason. You know you love me and you know that Nothing in this world can last forever.
Tchaikovsky: Lensky’s Aria from Eugene Onégin Text: Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Shilovsky, after Pushkin Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis, vesni moyei zlatiye dni? Shto dyen griadushki mnye gotovit? Yevo moi vzor naprasno lovit: v glubokoi mglye tayitsa on! Nyet muzhadi; prav sudbi zakon! Padu li ya, streloy pronzyonni, il mimo proletitona ona, vsyo blago; bdieniya i sna prikhodit cias opredelyonni! Blagoslovyen i dyen zabot, blagoslovyen i tmi prikhod! Blesnyeot zautra luch dennitsi i zayigrayet yarki dyen, a ya, bit mozhet, ya grobnitsi saidu v tayinstvennuyu syen! I pamyat yunovo poeta
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Where have you gone, golden days of my youth? What does the coming day have in store for me? I cannot know it: it is shrouded from me. No matter; Fate is just. Should I fall, pierced by the shot, or should it miss me, it’s all the same; sleeping and waking both have their appointed hour. Blessed is the day of common tasks, blessed, too, the day of troubles. The morning light begins to glow and the day starts to brighten, while I, perhaps, will enter the mysterious darkness of my tomb. And the memory of a young poet
PROGRAM
poglatit myedlanneya Lyeta. Zabudet mir menya ; no ti! Ti! ... Olga ... Skhazi, pridyosh li, dyeva krasoti, slezu prolit nad rannei urnoi i dumat: on menya lyubil! On mnye yedinoi posyatil rassvyet pecialni zhizni burnoi. Akh, Olga, ya tebya lyubil! Serdyechni drug, zhelanni drug , pridi, pridi! Zhelanni drug, pridi, ya tvoi suprug , pridi, pridi! Ya zhdu tebya, zhelanny drug, pridi, pridi; ya tvoi suprug! Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalitis, zlatye dni, zlatye dni moyey vesni?
will be swept away in Lethe’s stream. The world will forget me, but you … you … Olga … Tell me, beautiful maiden, will you come to shed a tear upon my premature urn and think: “He loved me. To me alone he devoted the sad years of his stormy life.” Ah, Olga, I loved you! My heart’s desire, my beloved, come, come. My desired one, come, come to your betrothed! I await you, the one I long for, come, come, I am your betrothed! Where, where, where have you gone, golden days of my youth?
Barber: Three Songs, Op. 10 Text: James Joyce, from Chamber Music Rain Has Fallen Rain has fallen all day. O come among the laden trees: The leaves lie thick upon the way Of memories. Staying a little by the way Of memories shall we depart. Come, my beloved, where I may Speak to your heart.
Sleep Now Sleep now, O sleep now, O you unquiet heart! A voice crying “Sleep now” Is heard in my heart. The voice of the winter Is heard at the door. O sleep, for the winter Is crying “Sleep no more.” My kiss will give peace now And quiet to your heart — Sleep on in peace now, O you unquiet heart!
MICHAEL FABIANO, TENOR
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PROGRAM
I Hear an Army Charging Upon the Land I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with flutt’ring whips, the charioteers. They cry unto the night their battlename: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil. They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, why have you left me alone?
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T H U R S DAY, A P R I L 6, 2017
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Michael Fabiano TENOR Of Michael Fabiano’s debut as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera, The Sunday Times in London wrote: “I can’t think of a Lensky at Covent Garden who has held the audience so spellbound in 40 years of Onegin-going… a glorious debut.” The recipient of the 2014 Beverly Sills Artist Award and the 2014 Richard Tucker Award, Fabiano is the first singer to win both awards in the same year, and is considered one of the greatest tenors in the world today. In the 2016–17 season, Fabiano made his debuts with the Royal Danish Opera in the Verdi Requiem and Houston Grand Opera in the title role of Gounod’s Faust, he returned to the San Francisco Symphony for a program of Italian masterworks, and sang Jean in Massenet’s rarely performed Hérodiade with Washington Concert Opera. Fabiano returned to the Metropolitan Opera for performances as Rodolfo in La Bohème and will sing Alfredo in La Traviata. He will be the guest soloist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals Concert, and perform in the Met’s 50th Anniversary Gala at Lincoln Center. In addition, he sings his first Don José in Carmen at Festival Aix-enProvence, and will perform a recital tour which will take him to seven cities in North America. Last season, he added four new roles to his repertoire: Rodolfo in Luisa Miller, which he performed to open the San Francisco Opera season, Lenski in Eugene Onegin, which marked Fabiano’s Royal Opera debut, the title role in Don Carlo, at San Francisco Opera and Jacopo in I due Foscari, in concert performances at the Teatro Real. He starred as Rodolfo in a new production of La Bohème at the Opernhaus Zurich and performed the Duke in a new production of Rigoletto at the Opéra National de Paris–Opéra Bastille. Fabiano was also a guest artist on the Opera Gala at the Festival Napa Valley.
Fabiano can be heard on the “Prologue” to Shostakovich’s Orango, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen on Deutsche Grammophon. On DVD he performs the title role of Donizetti’s Poliuto and Alfredo in La Traviata, both from the Glyndebourne Festival on Opus Arte, Cassio in Otello from the Metropolitan Opera on Decca and Gennaro in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia from the San Francisco Opera on EuroArts and Naxos of America. Fabiano is the recipient of Australia’s prestigious Helpmann Award in the “Best Male Performance in an Opera” category, for his portrayal of the title role in Gounod’s Faust with Opera Australia. He is a member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild Artists’ Council.
Laurent Philippe PIANO Laurent Philippe’s keen interest in opera has led him to associate with many Metropolitan Opera Artists and he has worked as a coach for many opera companies and institutions including The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, L’Atelier de L’Opéra de Montréal, The Canadian Opera Company, Michigan Opera Theatre, Florentine Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Opera San José, Seattle Opera and AVA. His conducting credits include assisting Sir Andrew Davis at the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre and Royal Albert Hall as well as performances at the helm of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Victoria Symphony. He is currently on the Faculty of the ENO Harewood Artists in London, United Kingdom and the IOS Opernhaus Zürich in Switzerland.
Fabiano has performed at many of the world’s leading opera houses; a list that includes: the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Teatro Real, Opéra National de Paris, Dutch National Opera, La Scala, Asociacíon Bilbaina de Amigos de la Ópera, Dresden Semperoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, English National Opera and the Teatro San Carlo. In addition, he has graced concert stages with some of the world’s most acclaimed orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony.
MICHAEL FABIANO, TENOR
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