Operas in Concert: The Weight of Motherhood
Richard Danielpour/Toni Morrison
Margaret Garner features a libretto by towering American novelist Toni Morrison that treats the same historical episode Morrison drew on in her celebrated novel Beloved. The story is a tragic one: the titular Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman, ultimately chooses to end her two children’s lives rather than let them return to servitude. Richard Danielpour sets this investigation of a mother’s heartbreaking choices with “undeniable craft” (The New York Times) in a “colorful and accessible” score in which “the voices are given the primacy they need and his use of the orchestra is masterful” (Cincinnati Post).
Soloists: Denyce Graves (Margaret Garner), Gregg Baker (Robert Garner), Rodney Filgrey (Edward Gaines)
trailer, Opera Philadelphia
© Scott Suchman/Kennedy Center
Samuel Barber/Gian Carlo Menotti
Vanessa’s effectiveness as an opera-in-concert has been amply proven by the recent performance by the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda, which The Washington Post called “dazzling.” Three generations of women — The Old Baronness, Vanessa (the Baronness’ daughter), and Erika (Vanessa’s niece and the Baronness’ granddaughter) — grapple with choices between ideals and compromise, isolation and openness. Barber’s music beautifully illustrates these dilemmas: the score is “ornate, vivid, tinged with modernism yet rooted in lyrical tradition… [the] music is deeply, richly autumnal. Barber never forgets that he is writing for the human voice, with all the glories and frailties that entails” (The Washington Post).
Soloists: Nicole Heaston (Vanessa); J’Nai Bridges, Zoie Reams (Erika); Edward Graves, Matthew Polenzani (Anatol)
'Must the Winter Come so Soon,' Glyndebourne
Kaija Saariaho/Amin Maalouf
Adriana Mater is set in a country at war, where the protagonist Adriana is raped by a soldier named Tsargo and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to and raises her son, Yonas, wondering whether he will be like his father. In the opera’s climax, Yonas learns the truth of his conception and must decide whether to kill his father in revenge for his mother’s suffering. With vibrant orchestrations, an amplified offstage chorus, and a dream-like formal structure of seven tableaux, “Saariaho succeed[s] in forging a work on an emotional scale only occasionally heard in contemporary opera” (The New York Times). Acclaimed concert presentations by the San Francisco Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestra, among others, point the way forward for other performances in the symphonic hall.
Soloists: Fleur Barron (Adriana), Axelle Fanyo (Refka), Nicholas Phan (Yonas), Christopher Purves (Tsargo)
trailer, Savolinna Opera Festival
Art’s Afterlives | Feminist Essays | Casting Off Chains: Abolition and the Civil War | The Americas: Latine Culture and History | East Asian Love Stories | Positively Medieval: Stories of the Middle Ages and Renaissance | Classics of English Fiction | The 19th Century: Great Wars and Colonial Sorrows | Upheavals of the 20th Century | The Weight of Motherhood