Performing in Avignon, France, May, 2011 - Avignon Notre Dame de Doms
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Café Musique Performs at March Salon
In March, Opera San Luis Obispo presents the ensemble Café Musique in what is described as "our most elegant Salon Series offering yet." Held at the Vina Robles winery, the salon features a "bubbles and cheese prelude" with full dinner to follow, each course paired with appropriate wines. Guests will have an opportunity to socialize with the musicians during dessert.
Café Musique will provide a full concert of its gypsy-style music, with an operatic flavor. According to the group's website, each of its members has "at least one foot planted deep in foreign musical soil. By merging five different backgrounds, the quintet presents a rich mixture of styles including gypsy, tango, classical and folk."
The salon will be held March 9th, 5:30 – 9:00pm at the Vina Robles Winery, 3700 Mill Road, Paso Robles. Single tickets for the general public are $125.00, $105.00 for OperaSLO members and Vina Robles Wine Club members. Tables of 10 can be reserved for $1125, or $945 for OperaSLO members and Vina Robles Wine Club members. For tickets, call Vina Robles Winery at (805) 227-4812 or go online to Opera SLO.
The MET Live in HD
During March the Met Live in HD series features two very different operas, Wagner's final statement in music drama, Parsifal, and Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. Parsifal is a deeply philosophical and spiritual work, while Francesca is a lust and blood thriller.
Though it was his last drama, Wagner conceived Parsifal as early as 1845, when he read the medieval German epic Parzifal, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Not until 1877, when he completed the libretto (which he called the "poem") did Wagner compose his Parsifal. In the intervening three decades, his readings of other sources of the legend, his philosophical interests and his own experience as a composer and a man added layers to his conception of this music drama.
The hero Parsifal is a man in a pure state of nature, knowing nothing of the world or relationships, ignorant especially of suffering and compassion. In this state he is first introduced to the Knights of the Grail and their king Amfortas by the wise elder knight Gurnemanz. Wagner used the Christian version of the epic (the earliest versions are not specifically religious), in which the Grail is the Cup of the Last Supper and also the vessel in which the blood of the dying Christ was caught. Also important in the story is the Holy Spear which was used to pierce the side of Christ on the cross.
Amfortas has been wounded by the Spear in a battle with an evil magician, Klingsor, and this wound will not heal. Moreover he has lost the spear to Klingsor. Amfortas constantly suffers both from the wound and from guilt over having broken the knights' vow of chastity. As king he must perform the ritual of the Grail – a Christian communion service – for his brotherhood, but doing so increases his agony. He wants only to die.
Parsifal, in his state of ignorance, witnesses the Grail ritual and Amfortas's suffering but does not understand either. Expelled from the kingdom of the Grail, he wanders through the world, eventually encountering Klingsor and Kundry, a woman of two personae, one a beautiful and seductive temptress, the other a pathetic figure searching for redemption. She has been cursed because she has laughed at the dying Christ, and like Wagner's Flying Dutchman, she cannot die until the curse is lifted. The curse will be lifted only when she finds a man who will not fall prey to her seductions.
Kundry tempts Parsifal, and he is on the point of yielding. Her kiss, though, awakens him to a blinding clarity about suffering – especially Amfortas's suffering from both the wound and the guilt which magnifies it, and the suffering of his own sexual yearnings and the painful need to deny them. It is a moment of profound enlightenment, and sets Parsifal on a course which will lead to his redemption and that of Amfortas and Kundry.
Having recaptured the Holy Spear from Klingsor, he heals Amfortas, whose wound can be closed only by the touch of the Spear, and brings a redemption of compassion to Amfortas, the entire brotherhood of knights, and Kundry. The music drama closes as Parsifal himself conducts the Grail ritual as the new ruler of the Grail knights. In Parsifal Wagner made a medieval adventure epic into a profound statement about the suffering of humanity, the healing power of compassion and the possibilities of redemption.
The Met's new production features Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, Katarina Dalayman as Kundry, and Peter Mattei as Amfortas.
Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini also traces its beginnings back to a medieval work, Dante's The Divine Comedy. A passage from the Inferno – Canto V – contains the basic story of the opera, which in turn is rooted in fact. As the result of a political marriage, Francesca da Polenta was wed to Giovanni Malatesta, called Gianciotto, who was crippled. She fell in love with his handsome brother Paolo, and they carried on an affair for several years. When they were caught in her bedroom together, Gianciotto killed them both.
Like many racy stories, this one got embellished over the years. The poet Boccaccio added the twist that Gianciotto sent Paolo in his place to Francesca, who was deceived into thinking that the handsome younger brother was Gianciotto, and learned of the deception only the morning after the marriage.
The more immediate source for the story was Gabriele D'Annunzio's play Francesca da Rimini, written in 1901, and fashioned into a libretto by Tito Ricordi the younger. D'Annunzio himself called the story "an epic of blood and lust". In its depiction of unbridled passions and violence, it belongs to the verismo (realism) movement in Italian opera.
Zandonai had close personal connections with leaders in the verismo movement; he was a pupil of Mascagni and knew Puccini. As a matter of fact, when Puccini became too ill to finish Turandot, Zandonai was among those composers considered to do the completion, though the task eventually was given to Franco Alfano.
The story of Francesca and Paolo was very popular. At least 18 operas on this subject, Zandonai's being the most famous, were composed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Likewise, four symphonic poems, the best known by Tchaikovsky, take the story as their programs.
Francesca is performed less frequently than other verismo operas, such as Puccini's La Boheme, so the Metropolitan Opera's production provides a good opportunity to see it. Eva-Maria Westbroek and Marcello Giordani star as Francesca and Paolo.
