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Advent as I sat in Most Holy Redeemer SINGER The life we have is very great; Church. The life we are to see AMERICAN CLASSICS Surpasses it because we know SINGER Co-workers. Strangers. Teen-agers. It is infinity. Pensioners. They washed his dishes. But when all space has been beheld VOICE A black man in a checkered sports coat. The And all dominion shown; pink-haired punkess with a jewel in her nose. The smallest human heart’s extent MARK ADAMO The gay couple in middle age. Reduces it to none. SINGER They kissed her on his lips, where once there VOICE These learned to love what is corruptible, Late Victorians were lips. They kissed her on his lips. while I, I, I, I shift my tailbone upon the cold, hard pew. VOICE These know the weight of bodies. Regina Coeli • Alcott Music Finale: Orchestra. Overture to Lysistrata * “Late Victorians” by Richard Rodriguez. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Rodriguez. Originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine (October 1990). By permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author. Emily Pulley • Andrew Sullivan • Dotian Levalier Mark Adamo Eclipse Chamber Orchestra • Sylvia Alimena Mark Adamo’s most recent première is Four Angels: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, introduced by the National Symphony Orchestra in June 2007. His second opera, Lysistrata: or, The Nude Goddess, bowed in March 2006 at New York City Opera, at which Adamo served five years as composer-in-residence. Lysistrata was commissioned and introduced by Houston Grand Opera for its fiftieth season in March 2005. Since its 1998 première, also by Houston Grand Opera, Little Women, the first opera for which Adamo composed both music and libretto, has been nationally telecast on the PBS series Great Performances, released on CD by Ondine Records, and heard in over sixty engagements from New York to Mexico City, Minneapolis, Adelaide, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. Choral works include Cantate Domino, for the Choral Arts Society of Washington; Garland, for C Francisco Nuñez and the Young People’s Chorus of New York, introduced in 2006; and Supreme Virtue, released on CD by M Seattle’s Esoterics in spring 2008. www.markadamo.com Y

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Mark Adamo (b. 1962) VOICE If he’s lucky, he’s got a year, a doctor told VOICE Brenda. Pat. Connie. Soledad. me. If not, he’s got two. Late Victorians • Regina Coeli • Alcott Music • Overture to Lysistrata SINGER And then, reluctant, turn away Late Victorians incorporated a small staging joke. He meant to remind his SINGER Crumbling is not an instant’s act, To con thee o’er and o’er, I could not write. I had been asked to write: the project was patron prince that the musicians he was keeping in his A fundamental pause; And blame the scanty love to be a set of songs for mezzo-soprano. But I could not country palace very much wanted – and deserved – to return Dilapidation’s processes We were content to show, write. to town. So Haydn wrote a last movement in which, person Are organized decays. VOICE “Lovingly cared for by the staff of Coming We – I and thirty other people from my church, an ad- by person, section by section, the musicians left the stage, ’T’is first a cobweb on the soul, Home Hospice.” hoc hospice – had just buried Bob, a man we hardly knew leaving only two violinists to carry on the song in a bare A cuticle of dust; until he fell ill with AIDS. And Don, whom I had just forest of music stands. A borer in the axis SINGER Augmented, sweet, a hundredfold directed in an opera, was failing. It played as a joke in 1732. But it seemed very different An elemental rust. If thou wouldst take it now. The thing that seemed unacceptable to me was how to me now. ordinary this was all becoming. Ruin is formal, devil’s work Consecutive and slow; Variation: Orchestra. “We have grown accustomed to figures disappearing I ended up writing something quite else for the song Fall in an instant no man did. Cadenza: Horn. from the landscape. Does this not lead us to interrogate cycle. But another piece – this piece – had found shape. I Slipping is crash’s law. the landscape?” – Richard Rodriguez, Late Victorians started sketching it at once, and completed it in the winter IV. Late Victorians, an essay Richard Rodriguez wrote for of 1994. The formal, oblique Rodriguez text would be Variation: Orchestra. Chorale: Orchestra. Harper’s, October 1990, is a memoir of San Francisco in spoken. Four Dickinson poems, singing everything the Cadenza: Violin and Viola. the first years of the plague. A central image was the Rodriguez would not say, would be sung. And the four VOICE Sometimes no family came. Or parents came Victorian house: those “painted lady” Victorians that waves movements would be linked by solo cadenzas written for III. but left without reconciliation, some of San Franciscans had reclaimed, had refurbished, and players from each choir of the orchestra, after which they preferring to say cancer. were now leaving empty as AIDS swept the city. The once- would leave the stage. VOICE I stood aloof at Cesar’s memorial service: the haunted houses were becoming haunted once again. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but now it seems to me kind of party he would enjoy, everybody said. SINGER But others came. I carried that essay with me everywhere the winter of that Late Victorians formally resembles nothing so much And so, for a time, Cesar lay improperly 1992. But I couldn’t set it. It was too long: too much. I as the Stations of the Cross. In the Catholic churches I knew buried in the conditional: VOICE But others came. didn’t want to write this experience. I didn’t recall choosing growing up, you will often find twelve friezes, or to witness it. sculptures, representing Christ’s journey to Calvary and, SINGER Would enjoy, everybody said. SINGER They walked his dog. They washed his dishes. I needed to write this song cycle, and I could not. beyond, to transformation. During Lent, the faithful walk VOICE … What else could they say? Cesar had no VOICE Nurses, nuns. The couple from next door. from frieze to frieze; meditate upon the image; and move religion beyond aesthetic bravery. What else I reread Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, particularly on to the next. They make a kind of living rosary. The could they say? SINGER They washed his dishes. They walked her its chapter on Emily Dickinson. Paglia’s take on Dickinson images themselves are static: mere panels. Jesus falls the dog. They bought her groceries. They was violently different from anything I’d read before. For first time. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. It is the pilgrim SINGER We cover thee, sweet face massaged her poor back. the first time I saw an icy glee, a perverse refusal to look who is dynamic, making the journey from image to image, Not that we tire of thee, away, in a quatrain such as walking the walk. It is in the heart of the pilgrim that the But that thyself fatigue of us; VOICE Co-workers. Strangers. Teen-agers. Pensioners. experience builds. Ruin is formal, devil’s work Late Victorians is meant in tribute to the living and in VOICE The phone rang. And rang again. Michael. SINGER They washed his dishes. They wiped his tears. Consecutive and slow; memory of the dead. I owe a debt of gratitude to Sylvia Paul. Adrian: well, what he’d thought were They wiped his ass. They kissed him on his Fall in an instant no man did; Alimena, to Kent Ashcraft, to James Petosa, and to the men shingles … lips, where once there were lips. Slipping is crash’s law. and women of Eclipse Chamber Orchestra. And the score That season The Washington Post asked me to review is dedicated to the memories of the thousands of the fallen, SINGER Remember, as thou flee VOICE And the saints of this city have named listed the National Chamber Orchestra’s performance of a famed particularly to those of Michael Patterson, Bob Williams, We follow thee until in the phone book, names I heard called Haydn symphony, the “Farewell.” In it, Haydn had Raymond Davila, and Donald Poe. Thou notice us no more; through a microphone one cold Sunday in

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Late Victorians Regina Coeli the orchestra is the only voice you have. No wonder it had Music for speaking voice, singing voice, instrumental soloists, and chamber orchestra by Mark Adamo. Regina Coeli is the slow movement, here rescored for been so hard to make an orchestral piece out of an anti- Text* by Richard Rodriguez, from his book Days of Obligation. Poems (italicised) by Emily Dickinson. strings alone, of Four Angels: Concerto for Harp and orchestral score! Orchestra, each movement of which presents the same Recognizing the problems gets you halfway to the theme in a different guise. Regina Coeli meditates on Mary, solutions. I cut one entire movement of Alcott Portraits, I. SINGER Is Heaven a physician? mother of Jesus. In Roman Catholicism, she is considered and omitted from those remaining the twelve-tone music They say that He can heal; the Angelic Queen who, at the hour of her death, was from which I’d made the opera’s recitative: divorced from VOICE Nineteen eighty-nine. San Francisco toys with But posthumous medicine assumed bodily into heaven by the seven orders of angels large-scale design, the non-tonal sections seemed non the tragic conclusion. Is unavailable. over whom she now reigns. She intercedes on behalf of sequitur. Why had I ignored, in the first draft, the opening human beings at the right hand of God. moments of the opera? That dreamy prelude, coalescing Prelude: Orchestra. Is Heaven an exchequeur? They speak of what we owe: As the music begins, strings alone – high, pulseless – into Jo’s first important theme, made an ideal introduction VOICE I live in a tall Victorian house that has been But that negotiation linger on the rising second, the arching triplets, of the first to the suite. Most importantly, I reduced the orchestration converted to four apartments: four single men. I’m not a party to. movement’s theme. At length, the harp presents its own, to percussion, celesta, harp, and strings. Now voice and simpler version: less an edict than a prayer of thanksgiving, orchestra were timbrally one: and compressing the kinetic Inside my bedroom are twin green shutters. Fugato: Winds. the harp lifts the melody out of the sterner, denser orchestra gave the string-writing in particular a satisfying They are false shutters, of no function beyond Cadenza: Clarinet. harmonies of its first incarnation and frames it instead in virtuosity. wit. They have the effect of turning my clean C major. The first movement of the new Alcott Music leads, apartment inside out. II. through a dreamscape of whole tones, to a statement of A few months ago I hired a man to paint the Alcott Music Jo’s major aria, “Perfect as we are”, in which Jo’s long- shutters green. I wanted the green shutters of VOICE He had been born in South America: he’d Alcott Music was meant simply as a souvenir for orchestra lined appreciation of her family’s love is interrupted by Manet … grown up in Paris. of my opera Little Women. But Alcott Music’s genesis has madcap digressions as she sketches out her newest He’d been everywhere: done everything. He been surprisingly difficult. In its first version, introduced by potboiling story. Meg’s answering aria, “Things change, SINGER The green shutters of Manet … yes … assumed the world. Eclipse under Sylvia in 1999, Alcott Portraits was cast in Jo”, wistful and exalted, forms the centerpiece of the second César. four movements, scored for the opera’s original slow movement. And, in “Alma and Gideon”, the girls’ VOICE You know the ones I mean … orchestration (wind quintet, percussion, harp and strings) parents’ wedding music, accelerated and rescored, brings César loved everything that ripened in time. and lasted twenty-five minutes. It was beautifully played, the suite to a gala finale. SINGER Yes, yes, I know the ones you mean … a Freshmen. Bordeaux. graciously received – and after its première, I asked my weathered look, as of verdigris … Manet … César could fashion liturgy from an artichoke. Manet … publisher to remove it from the catalogue. I didn’t think it Overture to Lysistrata SINGER Yesterday it was not ready, worked, and I didn’t know why. Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, my second opera, is in VOICE For several days the painter labored, rubbing Eight years passed. Little Women appeared in over sixty- some ways an answer to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, the his paints into the wood and then wiping them VOICE … cocking his head, rotating the artichoke in five international engagements, and I completed, among joyousness of which makes it more, not less, serious a off again. In this way he rehearsed for me his hand over a pot of cold water. smaller pieces, a second opera and my first concerto. Then piece. I love that score, and its smart, elegant, and decades of the ravages of weather. Sylvia asked that I revisit Alcott Portraits for this recording. irrepressible overture is a model of the form: so when New SINGER Tomorrow will be too late. Rereading the piece, I realized that in 1999 it had been York City Opera gave the Manhattan première of Lysistrata SINGER Decades, decades. Yellow enough? Black? too early to rethink the music apart from my libretto. For in 2006, I couldn’t resist trying to compose a comparably Verdigris! VOICE … Yorick’s skull. example, I love the opera’s final scene, but music that ebullient opening. Four chiming chords lead to orchestral SINGER Today it is perfect. worked conclusively onstage sounded anticlimactic in treatments first of the heroine’s tantrum cabaletta, “You’re VOICE The painter left one afternoon, saying he concert. And the piece’s orchestral reticence worked against not my own”; next, to the love theme shared by Myrrhine would return the next day, leaving behind his VOICE … as he lit the fire beneath the pot. it outside the theatre. I’d been happy with how underwritten and Kinesias, “Peace: yes! Of course”: and, at last, to the tubes, his brushes, his sponges and rags. Little Women’s instrumental part was: at its best, I hope breakneck polytonal calypso ensemble that closes the first SINGER We will eat it now. the score gives the illusion that voice generates the act, “From this day on”. He never returned. orchestra’s every timbre and chord. But in the concert hall, Mark Adamo

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Sylvia Alimena Dotian Levalier Sylvia Alimena has an active conducting career as Music Director and Conductor of Dotian Levalier, Principal Harpist of the National Symphony Orchestra since 1969, is a Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, the McLean Orchestra and Eclipse’s youth organization, graduate of the Curtis Institute where she studied with Carlos Salzedo and Marilyn Brass of Peace. In 1992 she and 22 of her National Symphony Orchestra colleagues Costello. She has made numerous recital, television, and radio appearances as well as formed the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and began a composer-in-residence programme. guest artist performances with other orchestras. She performs with flautist Sara Stern as She has conducted over a dozen world premières many of which were commissioned for “Stern and Levalier” which, along with violinist Elisabeth Adkins, has also given concerts Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, including music of Mark Adamo, Truman Harris and Tom in France. She has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Myron. A native of New York, Sylvia Alimena began playing the french horn in the the Emerson String Quartet, and Theater Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center. She Hicksville Public Schools at the age of nine. She began her professional career in Boston has performed Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with James Galway among many as a french hornist with the Boston Ballet Orchestra, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Photo: William Haroutounian others. In June 2007 she gave the première of Four Angels, a harp concerto by Mark the award-winning Beacon Brass Quintet, and as principal horn of the Boston Lyric Adamo which was commissioned for her by Leonard Slatkin, who conducted the first Opera and principal horn of the New Hampshire Symphony. She was critically acclaimed performance. She has performed concertos with conductors André Kostelanetz, Antal for her solo and offstage playing in the Boston Lyric Opera’s 1983 New York and Boston Doráti, Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonard Slatkin, and recorded on the Erato, Sony, Pro-Arte and MSR labels. Her productions of Wagner’s Das Ring des Nibelungen. In 1985 she was hired by Music harp was made by Howard Bryan in Lynchburg, Virginia in 2004. Director Mstislav Rostropovich as second horn of the National Symphony Orchestra, a position she currently still holds. Eclipse Chamber Orchestra The Eclipse Chamber Orchestra was formed in 1992 by 22 members of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington Emily Pulley D.C. While making world-class performances available to listeners from every age and economic level, it enhances the Emily Pulley has sung with opera companies and orchestras throughout the world, visibility and accessibility of its musicians to audiences in the nation’s capital. The orchestra has become known for including over ten seasons singing with the Metropolitan Opera, where her performed exceptional performances of diverse repertoire from the seventeenth to the 21st century, and has commissioned and given repertoire includes Marguerite in Faust, Nedda in Pagliacci, Anne Trulove in The Rake’s premières of over a dozen works. The level of artistry of the membership is such that Eclipse features its own members Progress, Blanche in Les dialogues des carmélites and Valencienne in the Met Première almost exclusively as of The Merry Widow. She sang the title rôle at the première of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata concerto soloists for each concert. Directed from its

Photo: Tess Steinkolk with Houston Grand Opera and reprised the rôle with New York City Opera, for which she received the Christopher Keene Award for outstanding performance of a new or inception by Sylvia Alimena, unusual work. guest conductors have included Leonard Slatkin and Joseph Silverstein. The orchestra made its John F. Kennedy Center début in Andrew Sullivan 1995 and has been featured Andrew Sullivan is the author of Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality frequently on WETA 90.9 (1995), Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (1998), and the editor FM radio and public radio‘s of Same-Sex Marriage, Pro and Con (1996). Author of the pioneering blog The Daily Performance Today. In Dish, he edited The New Republic between 1991 and 1996, and has written about issues addition to its recording of ranging from the crisis in the Catholic Church to the Iraq war, civil liberties, and torture the long-neglected music of for The New York Times Magazine, The Times of London, and The New York Times Florian Gassmann (Naxos Book Review. As a commentator, Sullivan has appeared on over a hundred radio and 8.570421), the orchestra is Photo: Matt Cavenaugh television shows across the United States. Born in England and first educated at Oxford, also recording the music of he earned a Masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard in 1986: while there, past and current composers- he was best known for his performances as Hamlet, Alan in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, and in-residence Mark Adamo Mozart in Shaffer’s Amadeus. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Truman Harris.

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CMYK NAXOS Playing Mark Time: ADAMO 56:48 (b. 1962) Disc Made in Canada. Printed & Assembled USA. ൿ broadcasting and copying of this compact disc prohibited. translations reserved. Unauthorised public performance, All rights in this sound recording, artwork, texts and 8.559258

& Late Victorians (1994, rev. 2007) 28:07 AMERICAN CLASSICS Ꭿ 1 I. 8:23 2009 Naxos Rights International Ltd. 2009 Naxos Rights International 2 II. 6:52 Acclaimed as ‘one of the best opera 3 composers of the moment’, Amer- III. 6:15 ican composer-librettist Mark 4 IV. 6:37 Adamo has also ventured into ADAMO: 5 Regina Coeli (2006) 7:55 symphonic composition and other From Four Angels: Concerto fields in each of which his theatrical sensitivity, political commitment for Harp and Orchestra and musical mastery are equally 6 Overture to Lysistrata (2005) 4:00 evident. The vivacity of his Overture to Lysistrata accentuates the play’s Late Victorians Alcott Music (1999, rev. 2007) 16:25 anti-war theme, while Alcott Music From the opera Little Women rethinks the music from his hit

Late Victorians 7 I. Jo 9:10 opera Little Women. Regina Coeli 8 II. Meg 3:48 pays tribute to the Queen of Heaven 9 III. Alma and Gideon 3:21 and Late Victorians is dedicated both to the memory of those who 1–4 Emily Pulley, Soprano have died and to those who have Andrew Sullivan, Narrator 1–4 survived AIDS. ADAMO: Dotian Levalier, Harp 5 Eclipse Chamber Orchestra WORLD PREMIÈRE DDD Sylvia Alimena RECORDINGS C Recorded at George Washington Masonic Memorial, Alexandria, www.naxos.com Virginia, USA, 21 May 2007 (1–4) & 21 October 2007 (5–9) M Producers: Elizabeth S, Schulze, Laurel Bennert Ohlson, 8.559258 8.559258 Steven A. Honigberg, Sylvia Alimena Y Engineer & Editor: Antonino D’Urzo Artistic advisors: Mark Adamo, John Corigliano Publisher: Fluent Music, Inc. (tracks 1–4); G. Schirmer (5–9) K Cover photo by Tym Stevens • American flag, folk artist, 1880s NAXOS