Looking Ahead to Show Boat by Kathryn Bumpass

Opera San Luis Obispo has announced that tickets are now on sale for their spring production of Show Boat, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Show dates are May 10 and 11, 2014, Mother’s Day weekend, at the Performing Arts Center on the Cal Poly campus.

This beloved musical will be conducted by Brian Asher Alhadeff, Artistic and General Director of Opera San Luis Obispo. Erik Austin of Kelrik Productions will direct the production and Drew Silvaggio of the Civic Ballet will choreograph the musical. The choirs of Morro Bay High School, led by ColleenWall, will join as well. Guest artists will perform the major roles.

Ticket prices range from $10 to $75. Both performances are at the Performing Arts Center on the Cal Poly campus. Tickets may be purchased at the PAC ticket office, by calling 805-756-4849, or by going online at www.pacslo.com.
More information about Show Boat will featured in the April edition of SLO Coast Journal. Get your tickets now to be assured of a good seat.

THE MET LIVE IN HD
Borodin’s Prince Igor; Massenet’s Werther

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) was both a research chemist and a composer, a seeming contradiction. Yet he composed some of the most significant music of later 19th century music, Borodin was also part of “The Mighty Handful” of Russian nationalist composers. There were five of them all together: Borodin, the leader Mili Balakirev, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky and Cesar Cui. In the West they are usually known as “The Five”.

They were given the title “Mighty Handful” by Vladimir Stasov, a highly erudite man of letters and the arts. He was a propagandist for nationalism in Russian music. He promoted the attempt to find a distinctly “Russian” music by use of folk stories, and musical elements reminiscent of Russian folk song and dance, and Russian church music.

At Stasov’s urging, Borodin decided to compose an opera, and it was Stasov who supplied the scenario for what became Prince Igor. The opera is based on a medieval epic, “The Lay of the Host of Igor”. Using the scenario and the poem itself, Borodin created the libretto.
Borodin worked on the opera 1869-1887, but at his death both the libretto and the music remained unfinished. It was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov from scraps of manuscript left behind by Borodin; they even had to compose some of the missing sections themselves.
The eventual libretto tells the story of Prince Igor who goes to war to drive out the marauding Polovtsian tribes who have attacked Russian lands. His troops are defeated and he and his son Vladimir are taken captive. Superficially it’s not a painful captivity, though, as their conqueror the Khan treats them as guests and seeks to make an alliance with Igor.

Vladimir in the meantime has fallen in love with the Khan’s daughter and wants to marry her. Though the Khan approves, Igor never will. He escapes and heads back to his home city, Putivl. While Igor has been gone, his evil brother-in-law Prince Galitsky has turned to debauchery and plots to take over from the absent Igor. The Polovtsians attack the city and Putivl is in ruins when Igor returns. Nevertheless his people rejoice at his return.

The opera has little in the way of conventional stage action; rather it unfolds primarily as a series of vivid stage pictures (the term is music scholar Gerald Abraham’s). Conceived as a series of stage pictures, the opera proceeds with the impression of action, even though there is little of it on stage.

We are presented with many colorful tableaux, most of them involving groups of people as a background, and some very beautiful music. The most famous musical numbers of the opera occur in current Act I (formerly Act II): the dances and choruses of the Polovtsians, which are often excerpted for concerts.

The Met has not presented Prince Igor since 1917, almost 100 years ago. The new production, by Dmitri Tchernaikov, stars Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, Oksana Dyka as Igor’s wife Yaroslavna, Anita Rachvelishvili as the Khan’s daughter Konchakovna, and Sergey Semishkur as Vladimir.

An interview with Ildar Abdrazakov was the cover story in the February issue of Opera News. Unlike many other Russian singers Abdrazakov did not make his early mark in Russian opera, but moved instead into the Italian repertory. Asked why, by interviewer F. Paul Driscoll, Abdrazakov replied, “It’s because of my voice. My voice is more close to that bel canto sound than it is to the sound one needs for the big, big Russian things.”

Not that his voice is small. He says, “Someday, yes, the operas written for the heavy voices will work for me. . .Now I just need to wait.” He aspires eventually to do the title role of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

Borodin’s Prince Igor will be seen locally at the Performing Arts Center on the Cal Poly campus, Sunday, March 2, at 2pm as part of the “Met Live in HD” series. Tickets are available at the Cal Poly ticket office, by telephone at 805-756-4849 or online at PAC SLO.

Massenet’s Werther is based on the epistolary novel The Sufferings of Young Werther, by the most famous of late 18th- 19th century German writers, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe stands at the head of modern German literature, and his poems and novels were frequently set to music in the Romantic era. Beethoven and Schubert were among his many admirers.

His story of Werther has all the earmarks of the pre-Romantic movement called the “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress): a hypersensitive young artist, a high value placed on feelings as opposed to rationality, impossible love, and an intimate connection between love and death.
Werther, the young artist, has fallen hopelessly in love with a woman (Charlotte), promised to another man, Albert, whom she subsequently marries. Tortured by his frustrations and his inability to forget her, he eventually commits suicide.

The impact of this novel, written in 1771, can scarcely be over-estimated. It was widely read and in some ways imitated by actual young men, many of whom adopted Werther’s characteristic costume of blue suit with yellow vest. Some youths in despair even committed suicide.

There are significant differences between the novel and the opera, chiefly having to do with the motivation of the characters. In the opera, Charlotte, for instance, promises her dying mother that she will marry Albert. Out of duty she does so, even though she has fallen in love with Werther. In the novel she marries Albert as a matter of choice.

Massenet and his librettists made this and other changes to heighten the drama and to make Werther’s death seem more inevitable.

Massenet’s musical setting bears the hallmarks of late Romantic opera. He employs a large orchestra with many evocative colors available. That said, there are many passages for solo instruments playing over the orchestra, especially for violin, cello and harp. This gives an intimacy to the scoring that enhances the story and Werther’s longings for Charlotte.

Wagner’s influence can also be heard in many passages. Indeed, European composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries could scarcely escape Wagner. By the time Werther was written, 1892, the German master’s characteristic harmonic progressions, scoring, and melodic writing were part of the pan-European compositional language.

Werther will air Saturday, March 15, at 9:55am, in the Performing Arts Center on the Cal Poly campus. Tickets are still available; cost is $27, which includes parking. Visit the Cal Poly ticket office, call 805-7564849, or go online at PAC SLO.