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The Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program and The Juilliard School present An Evening of Verdi Evan Rogister, Conductor Stephen Wadsworth, Director Brian Hong, Violin Singers from the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program Juilliard Orchestra Friday, February 23, 2018, 8:00pm Peter Jay Sharp Theater GIUSEPPE VERDI I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843, rev. 1847): Act III Trio (1813–1901) GISELDA Michelle Bradley ORONTE Kang Wang PAGANO David Leigh Brian Hong, Violin Stiffelio (1850): Act II LINA Michelle Bradley RAFFAELE Gerard Schneider COUNT STANKAR Adrian Timpau STIFFELIO Ian Koziara JORG David Leigh Intermission VERDI Falstaff (1893): Act I, Scene 2 ALICE FORD Gabriella Reyes de Ramírez NANNETTA Hyesang Park MEG PAGE Emily D’Angelo MISTRESS QUICKLY Sara Couden DR. CAIUS Ian Koziara BARDOLFO Charles Sy FENTON Petr Nekoranec PISTOLA David Leigh FORD Adrian Timpau (Program continues) 1 Rigoletto (1851): Act III GILDA Hyesang Park RIGOLETTO Kidon Choi DUKE OF MANTUA Kang Wang MADDALENA Rihab Chaieb SPARAFUCILE David Leigh Performance time: approximately 1 hour, 20 minutes, including one intermission Music Preparation: John Fisher, Natalia Katyukova, Zalman Kelber, Ken Noda, Valeria Polunina, Nate Raskin Language Preparation: Corradina Caporello, Giuseppe Mentuccia Chorus Masters: Zalman Kelber (Stiffelio), Nate Raskin (Rigoletto) Supertitles: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera, edited and operated by Celeste Montemarano The selection from Stiffelio is performed by arrangement with Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey and Hawkes company, Sole Agent in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for Casa Ricordi/Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.R.L., publisher and copyright owner. This performance is supported in part by the Muriel Gluck Production Fund. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 2 Notes on the Program By Jay Goodwin As is Beethoven's, Verdi’s body of work is often divided by contemporary commentators into three artistic periods. In the first period, stretching from 1839 to 1850, Verdi was at his most prolific, quickly completing 15 operas that established him with audiences of the time as one of the world’s leading opera composers and the successor to Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini, all of whom had recently died or retired. The towering masterpieces that guaranteed Verdi’s position alongside opera’s few all-time great composers, however, did not appear until the second and third periods of his career, marked by a significant break away from, or at least a highly innovative re-interpretation of, the traditional forms and expectations of Italian opera, to which his early works had mostly adhered. In tonight’s program, spanning works that date from 1843 to 1893, we’ll hear music from all three portions of Verdi’s life. I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (1843)—the first opera Verdi composed after the premiere of Nabucco rocketed him to stardom and placed him in the highest demand the previous year—marked the beginning of the busiest time in the composer’s life, during which he composed 12 operas in just seven years, all of which display a varying balance of music the reveals Verdi’s unbridled young genius alongside passages of deft but less original craftsmanship. Stiffelio, which premiered in Trieste in 1850, is considered the last fruit of this early eruption of operas, though in some ways it shares more in common with the more mature works soon to follow. Moving forward from Stiffelio to his next opera, and keeping with the Beethoven analogy, Rigoletto was Verdi’s “Eroica,” marking the beginning of the composer’s middle period and surpassing in originality and achievement all of his previous work. Its compelling incisiveness and masterful adaptation of musical form to its dramatic context also points toward Verdi’s transcendent final two operas, of which we hear an excerpt from the second, Falstaff—the composer’s only mature comedy, and one of opera’s greatest marriages of words and music. I Lombardi: Act III Trio Verdi faced a tall task in writing a follow-up to Nabucco, which had become a true sensation, both for the young composer’s brilliant and infectious music and for the connection audiences made between the Jews’ struggle with their Babylonian oppressors in that biblical tale with Italy’s contemporary subjugation to Austrian rule. The public’s expectations for Verdi’s next opera, therefore, had risen to daunting heights. Hoping for a similar sense of scale, he and librettist Temistocle Solera turned to another tale from the distant past, Tommaso Grossi’s I Lombardi alla prima crociata (The Lombards at the First Crusade), a 15-part verse epic that focuses on a single family of Lombards and their exploits around the turbulent turn of the 12th century. I Lombardi is a less focused work than Nabucco but is perhaps even more exuberant, jam-packed with the dazzling vocal displays and rousing choral numbers that made the earlier opera such a crowd-pleaser. And it once again allowed Italians to see themselves as the protagonists of the story, this time engaged in a proactive quest to liberate their sacred land. The premiere 3 Notes on the Program (Continued) was another smashing success, and from that point onward, there was no stopping Verdi’s exponentially growing stardom. I Lombardi’s third act is subtitled “The Conversion,” and in its third and final scene, which we hear in tonight’s program, we witness that conversion, an onstage baptism that almost prevented the work from being performed due to the objections of Milan’s Archbishop, who considered the simulated sacrament sacrilegious. Oronte (tenor), son of the Muslim ruler of Antioch, has been grievously wounded in battle with the Lombard Crusaders, led by Arvino, who are attempting to capture the city. Oronte hides in a grotto with Giselda (soprano), Arvino’s daughter, who, after being captured by the Muslims, has fallen in love with him. As Oronte lies dying, Giselda rails against God for his cruelty. A hermitic holy man enters the cave—secretly Pagano (bass), Arvino’s brother and Giselda’s uncle, who has secluded himself to repent and seek absolution of his sins, especially the twice-attempted murder of his brother. Pagano reproaches Giselda for her blasphemy and baptizes Oronte, who dies promising to reunite with Giselda in heaven. The scene begins with a prelude featuring extended, rhapsodic writing for solo violin, which continues to enjoy a prominent role once the singing begins. The trio itself offers soaring lines for all three singers and perfectly encapsulates Verdi’s early style, with its blending of bel canto elements with more forceful declamation. Stiffelio: Act II Stiffelio is remarkable for several reasons, not least that it is a musically and dramatically outstanding work by one of opera’s most popular composers and yet languished in obscurity for more than 100 years—first because the majority of the original material was thought to be lost, and then because what manuscripts were discovered were versions that had been bowdlerized by censors prior to the work’s 1850 Trieste premiere. The reason for that censorship is the next remarkable aspect of the piece—the nature of the plot. Based on the play Le Pasteur, ou L’Évangile et le Foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois, Stiffelio concerns the raw, intimate drama of spousal and familial bonds being stretched and broken by suspicion, infidelity, and revenge, all considered alongside, and set in opposition to, Christian values. For contemporary audiences, it is startlingly direct and persuasively modern; for the mid–19th-century authorities, it was beyond the pale. The censors demanded the removal of several crucial plot elements, including the title character’s identity as a Protestant minister and the express comparisons drawn between his faith in Biblical teachings and the events occurring in his own life. The version audiences were presented with in 1850 was therefore dramatically neutered, and a predictable failure was the result. In the 1960s, some manuscripts for Stiffelio were finally discovered, and in the early 1990s, a new critical edition—drawing on further discoveries and significant forensic musicological work to erase the stain of the censors— 4 made it possible to perform something very close to what Verdi intended the opera to be. Though it will take time for this “new” Verdi opera to receive the exposure necessary to secure a place alongside the composer’s other repertory staples, the work’s intrinsic quality suggests that it may eventually do so. In the second of Stiffelio’s three acts, the title character (tenor) has returned from a mission and discovered evidence that his wife, Lina (soprano), has been unfaithful. Her father, Count Stankar (baritone) has determined that her lover is the nobleman Raffaele (tenor), and, to defend his family’s honor, has challenged him to a duel. As Act II begins, Lina prays at her mother’s tomb for forgiveness. Raffaele arrives to declare his love, but she rejects him. Stankar arrives and attacks his daughter’s seducer, but their swordplay is interrupted by the arrival of Stiffelio. When he learns that Raffaele is Lina’s lover, he seizes Stankar’s sword and challenges his rival himself. At the sound of an offstage chorus singing a prayer, however, he remembers his faith and the Christian teachings of forgiveness, and is paralyzed by his conflicting emotions. The fast- paced action, free-flowing musical structure, and nuanced, relatable internal struggle of the title character in this act make for riveting musical theater and reveal that in Stiffelio, Verdi’s artistic thinking was already very close to the new style that would take full flight the following year in Rigoletto.