Waterford Concert Series Program 2011
Program Notes, Maryland Opera Studio

The Maryland Opera Studio returns with another remarkable program of musical riches. The eternal theme of opera––love in all its aspects: sacred and profane, romantic, comic, cynical and tragic, is explored through a wide variety of musical styles from Grand Opera to Operetta. One of four ensemble pieces, the Champagne Chorus from Die Fledermaus will start us off in a good mood. After a series of amorous flirtations, mistaken identities and confusions of all kinds, everybody reaches agreement and celebrates. We enter the 20th century with Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and Cunegonde’s coloratura aria, technically difficult, and a challenge to the acting ability of the singer as she drapes herself with jewels and dances around the stage. The tender barcarolle, Belle Nuit, ô nuit d’amour from The Tales of Hoffmann, a love-song that bemoans the passing of love, is sung by the courtesan Giulietta just before her death. The great and well-loved tenor aria Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot asks the world to stay awake while he awaits the verdict of love or death from his beloved. A contrast follows as Musetta, the soubrette in Puccini’s La Bohème, flirts and teases to get the attention of her erstwhile lover in a brilliant coloratura aria. Pure comedy follows with Sondheim’s Into the Woods, a series of adventures from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in which the two princes bemoan their difficulties in capturing their respective ladies. L’Elisir d’Amore is another change of pace, as the poor peasant Nemorino, in love with a rich landowner’s daughter, has detected a tear in her eye which leads him to think she loves him. Next, from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a quintet in which the attendants of the Queen of the Night have taken off the padlock from Papageno’s mouth, a punishment for lying, and send him off to help the prince rescue his lady. Back to operetta with the next three selections: Nanki-Poo, actually the son of The Mikado, is in disguise as a wandering minstrel in order to win his beloved; in The Pirates of Penzance, Mabel, the daughter of the Major-General  is falling in love with a young pirate who is trying to change his ways; and a rousing chorus of men in The Merry Widow, in which the various plotters and suitors for the hand of a rich widow, wonder what it is that women want. 

 In Menotti’s comic opera, Amelia al Ballo, the capricious heroine is so determined to go to the ball that she floors her husband with a vase, has her lover arrested for it, and goes to the ball with the arresting officer. From comedy to tragedy in Puccini’s Il Tabaro (The Cloak): the love duet between the illicit lovers is followed by a song of vengeance by the betrayed husband, who once used his cloak to shield his wife and child and now uses it to cover the body of the lover he has murdered. On to Verdi’s Rigoletto where the cynical and womanizing duke is trying to seduce a new love, Maddelena, while overheard by the woman who truly loves him and her adoring father. We will be holding our breaths during the next selection, for, of all the brilliant patter songs in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas, the Modern Major-General’s from The Pirates of Penzance is the funniest and most difficult. The love duet from Der Rosenkavalier, known as “The Presentation of the Rose,” is touching and tender. Sophie is fretting over her forthcoming marriage to a man she does not want. Young Octavian, dressed all in silver, hands her a silver rose on behalf of her suitor, and the two young people fall instantly in love.

The program ends with a greatly-loved ensemble piece, the slaves’ chorus from Nabucco. The Jewish captives in Babylon, after the fall of Judea, sing a mournful song of longing for their homeland. Many Italians regard this as their unofficial national anthem.