Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphony No.2 in E Minor, Op.27

Peoria Symphony Orchestra February 13, 2016 Program Notes by Michael Allsen

This concert opens with a lively overture by Rossini and a lush symphonic movement by Rachmaninoff. The orchestra’s showpiece is Ravel’s colorfully-orchestrated Boléro. We then welcome soprano Marisa Buchheit for a rich selection of arias and songs from opera and Broadway: works by Puccini, Arditi, Mozart, Lehár, Bernstein, and Kern.

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri

Rossini’s opera L’Italiana in Algeri (“The Italian Girl in Algiers”) was premiered in Venice, at the Teatro San Benedetto on May 22, 1813. Duration 8:00.

1813 was Rossini’s Big Year: when this 21-year-old hit the operatic big time. He had worked with some success as a composer of lighter operas and musical “farces” even as a teenager. But his first true hit was in February 1813, when his serious opera Tancredi opened in Venice. The Venetian audience demanded a follow-up, and just three months later, he opened the comic opera L’Italiana in Algeri, which was every bit as successful as Tancredi. (Depending on which newspaper report you believe, he completed the entire score in either 18 or 27 days!) Rossini’s comic operas are always a delightful mix of ludicrous situations and silly characters, but L’Italiana features what is certainly one of his wackiest plots. A popular story line for comic operas in this period was the abduction of a young woman by a Turkish or Algerian prince—and her eventual rescue from his harem. Mozart used this in his Abduction from the Seraglio, and there are many others. L’italiana turns this common plot upside-down. A young man named Lindoro is shipwrecked off the Algerian coast, and is held captive at the court of the Bey of Algiers (the local Muslim prince). It is Lindoro’s girlfriend Isabella who comes to rescue him, which she eventually does—through a bit of outrageous flirting, careful planning, and some ridiculous plot twists.

L’Italiana is still regularly staged today, and its lively overture is frequently played on its own as a concert piece. (For his part, Rossini liked it well enough that he actually recycled it as an overture to each of his next two operas!) It opens with a slow and rather sneaky-sounding introduction with pizzicato strings interrupted by a sudden cymbal crash (the prominent use of drums and cymbals lending this a bit of exotic “Algerian” flavor) and a lovely oboe solo. Just when things seem to be getting a little serious the tempo abruptly quickens, and the woodwinds begin a quirky main theme that builds quickly to passage for full orchestra. The oboe introduces a more lyrical second idea, with a spiky little piccolo countermelody. There is a brief, mock- serious development, before the overture ends with a full recapitulation of these ideas and short, furious coda.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphony No.2 in E Minor, Op.27 — Adagio

Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2 was completed in 1907. The first performance took place in St. Petersburg on February 15, 1908. Duration 57:00.

Rachmaninoff’s second symphony was a the work of a young man—completed when he was only 30—but it was also a work of a man who had already seen his share of troubles. The premiere of his first symphony in 1897 was such a disaster that Rachmaninoff seriously considered giving up composition, and the unrelentingly cruel attacks on this work contributed to a severe bout of depression. Rachmaninoff recovered his emotional stability and confidence only in 1900—the second piano concerto, published in 1901, represents his return to life as a composer. Perhaps with the failure of his first symphony in mind, he worked on the new E minor symphony in secret. At the time, he was living in Dresden, having left Moscow to escape increasingly violent political turmoil in Russia, and he did not tell even his closest friends about the new project Rachmaninoff returned to Russia in the summer of 1907, bringing the nearly- completed score for the Symphony No.2 with him, and the new symphony was ready in January of 1908 for its first performance in St. Petersburg. This performance, which Rachmaninoff conducted, was as much a triumph as his first symphony had been a failure. A second performance, just a week later in Moscow, was equally successful. Rachmaninoff had vindicated himself—most importantly in his own mind—as a symphonist, and the second symphony has remained in the repertoire ever since that time.

The third movement (Adagio) is unabashedly Romantic throughout. The strings enter with a lush passage that is one of Rachmainoff’s most familiar melodies (thanks in part to a famous—or infamous—pop song reworking popularized by singer Eric Carmen in the 1970s). After this introduction, the solo clarinet spins out a seemingly endless melody above a string background. The central section of this movement develops the symphony’s motto melody in the strings, and the oboe and English horn overlay the strings with a rather spooky new theme. In the concluding section, Rachmaninoff returns to the lush opening theme, now letting it expand in much broader strokes.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Boléro

Ravel composed this work in 1928, and its premiere was at the Paris Opèra on November 22, 1928. Duration 17:00.

Boléro is one of the later works of Ravel, and his most popular. In fact, Boléro is one of those pieces that is so popular it risks being a cliché. It has been used in movies—most famously in a memorable scene in the otherwise forgettable 1979 film 10—television, advertising, and even figure skating: usually to suggest something languorous and sexy. But the work Ravel called his “only masterpiece” remains as exciting and musically satisfying as it was in its first performance in 1928.

Boléro was written as a ballet score by Ida Rubinstein. Her ballet, a solo dance set in a Spanish tavern, called for a Spanish idiom, and she originally suggested a transcription of pieces from Iberia by Isaac Albéniz. This proved impossible due to copyright restrictions, and instead Ravel produced an entirely innovative score based on a stylized boléro rhythm—a folk dance of southern Spain. The ballet production was successful, but Boléro proved to be phenomenally popular as a concert work, and it was promptly performed across Europe and America. Not everyone liked it, however—one American critic called it “...the most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music. From the beginning to the end of its 339 measures, it is simply the incredible repetition of a single rhythm....and above it is the blatant recurrence of an overwhelmingly vulgar cabaret tune...” Ravel was taken aback by the strong reactions—negative and positive—to the piece, and in 1931, wrote a letter to the London Daily Telegraph explaining his intentions:

“I am particularly anxious that there should be no misunderstanding as to my Boléro. It is an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and it should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before the first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral texture without music—of one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except in the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are impersonal—folk tunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind. Whatever may have been said to the contrary, the orchestral treatment is simple and straightforward throughout, without the slightest attempt at virtuosity... I have done exactly what I have set out to do, and it is for listeners to take it or leave it.”

Ravel’s astonishing statement that Boléro is “without music” probably refers to its completely original form: there is none of the usual thematic development or sectional repetitions—there is simply a constantly-repeated two-part theme. There are also no changes in harmony in the traditional sense: the harmony is an unwavering C Major for nearly fifteen minutes. The form is instead a constantly-evolving orchestration, changing the color and gradually adding all of the instruments of an expanded orchestra that includes such unusual timbres as piccolo trumpet, oboe d’amore, and three saxophones. Underlying all of this is the unchanging boléro rhythm played by a pizzicato strings and single snare drum—in fact, one of the most challenging percussion parts in the orchestral literature! The two parts of the theme—each repeated in the form AABB—reappear some eighteen times over the course of the piece. There is a kind of inexorable growth until the very end, when without warning, the harmony abruptly changes to E Major. This seems to have been Ravel’s way of breaking the tremendous momentum of the piece—by this point it has reached critical mass, and the end is not a traditional coda, but more a kind of exhausted collapse.

Vocal Selections

Gianni Schicchi is the third of three short operas that Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) grouped together as “Il trittico.” The operas were premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918. Gianni Schicchi is the lightest of the three, a typically convoluted Italian comic opera plot that

concerns the death of the wealthy Buoso Donati, and his greedy relatives struggle for his property. It also centers on the frustrated love of Rinuccio and Lauretta, daughter of the conniving Gianni Schicchi (a character briefly mentioned in Dante’s Inferno). There are all of the traditional, wonderfully ridiculous elements of comic opera—among the more outrageous moments is when Schicchi imitates the recently-deceased Donati in order to dictate a new will to a notary. In the most famous aria of the opera, Lauretta drops to her knees before her father and sings the poignant “O mio babbino caro,” (“O my dear papa”) begging him to help her marry her beloved.

Luigi Arditi (1820-1902) is nearly forgotten today, but he had a successful career in the late 19th century as a conductor and composer. After completing his studies in Milan, Arditi conducted an opera company in Cuba before moving to New York in the 1850s. He spent most of the last 40 years of his life working in England, though continued to tour Europe and the United States. As a composer, Arditi wrote at least three well-regarded operas, but he known almost exclusively today for the vocal waltz Il bacio (A Kiss). According to Arditi’s memoirs, the song dates to 1859, when he was dining in Manchester with Marietta Piccolomini—one of the leading sopranos of the age. He went to the piano, and improvised a waltz that she praised. He had promised her a song that she could use in her tour of England, and a singer he was working with at the time, Gottardo Aldighieri, wrote a lush romantic text to set to Arditi’s waltz. Piccolomini sang it at a concert in Brighton the very next day. After a blustery introduction, Il bacio is all lilting lyricism, with ample opportunity for stunning ornamentation.

Mozart’s three collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte—Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte—are generally thought to be his finest theatrical creations. The first of these, Figaro, was controversial for its time, adapting a 1784 French stage play by Beaumarchais that had been partially responsible for getting its playwright tossed in jail! The play, La folle journée, ou Le mariage de Figáro, pushed the limits of aristocratic tolerance with its outrageously lecherous and gullible central character, the Count. While Mozart and da Ponte toned down the more extreme aspects of the play, they achieved a remarkably realistic and truly funny opera. It centers on the wily Figaro and his fiancée Susanna as they outwit the Count, who is lusting after Susanna, and the old dowager Marcellina, who is insisting that Figaro must marry her. Part of this complicated mix is Cherubino, one of opera’s great “pants roles” (a young male character sung by a woman)—Susanna’s younger brother, who has a serious case of “puppy love” for the Countess…and for all women in general! It was among the greatest successes of Mozart’s life. There were so many calls for pieces to be repeated—sometimes doubling the opera’s length—that eventually the Emperor Joseph stepped in, expressly forbidding repetition of anything but arias. The opera was an even wilder success in Prague half a year later— Mozart’s visit to Prague in January 1786 is still celebrated by annual performances of Figaro there. Cherubino’s aria “Voi che sapete” comes from Act II, where Figaro, Susanna, and the Countess are plotting revenge on the Count—and Susanna talks her brother into singing the song he has written for the Countess. The aria, certainly one of Mozart’s finest, is at times childlike and naïve, though Cherubino is dealing with completely “grown up” feelings.

Franz Lehár (1870-1948) began his career as an army bandmaster but by the early 20th century, was conducting and composing operas for Vienna’s famed Theater an der Wein. He would remain one of Vienna’s most popular composers for the next three decades, renowned for his

waltzes, but especially for over 30 stage works. Lehár was particularly successful in writing lighter comic works—his 1905 operetta The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) was a phenomenal international hit, and remains a regular part of the repertoire over a century later. He described his very last stage work, Giuditta, as a “musical comedy in five scenes,” though it is a much darker and more serious work than Lehár’s more usual frothy operettas. Giuditta was scored for a large orchestra and is in many way more ambitious than any of his earlier works. The plot—often compared to Bizet’s Carmen—centers on Giuditta, a beautiful, but heartless young woman who abandons her husband to follow a dashing military officer to North Africa. In Scene 4, Giuditta has been abandoned by her officer, and is earning her living as a dancer in the Alcazar night club in North Africa. Asked to explain her allure to all men, she sings the aria “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß.” She begins by claiming to be bewildered by her appeal, but then goes on to describe exactly why men find her irresistible. The aria alternates beween a sinuous Spanish-flavored song (with clear echoes of Carmen’s sexy habañera), a wild and exotic dance interlude, and lush Viennese romanticism.

The early history of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide dates to 1950, when playwright Lillian Hellman suggested the Voltaire play as a possible subject for collaboration. Voltaire’s satire describes the philosophical awakening of Candide, a young student of the savant Dr. Pangloss. After interminable (and hilarious) tribulations, Candide sheds his optimism and concludes that “to grow one’s own garden” should the primary aim of life. Candide’s bitter rejection of boundless optimism and philosophical approaches to world problems—beloved ideals of the Age of Enlightenment—caused an understandable stir at the French court and elsewhere in Europe, and it was promptly placed in the Vatican Index of banned books. Bernstein’s Candide was in one sense a parody of the conventions of opera and operetta. In a broader way, however, Candide was a satire of the parochialism of America in the 1950s—more specifically the political paranoia that had threatened Hellman and many of Bernstein’s acquaintances with blacklisting and worse. Candide was not completed until 1956, four years after Hellman had been called to testify at the McCarthy hearings, and two years after the humiliation of Senator McCarthy himself. Shortly after its premiere Bernstein described Candide as a “...political comment in the aftermath of Joe McCarthy,” and political figures are indeed the most bitterly lampooned characters in the operetta. But every character in the opera gets their share of satire. “Glitter and be Gay” from Act I is a lament sung by Candide’s lover Cunegonde, who at this point in the opera has been reduced to living as the mistress of two wealthy Parisians...who thoughtfully see her on alternate days. Beginning as a lugubrious lament that she is forced to “glitter and be gay” in her “gilded cage,” it quickly turns into a witty parody of 19th-century coloratura arias when she reflects that perhaps the rewards of this life aren’t in fact so bad after all: “If I’m not pure, at least my jewels are!”

Jerome Kern’s Show Boat of 1927 is among the most important works in the history of the Broadway musical. With a book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, it was notable for its serious subject-matter at a time when most Broadway shows were pure fluff. Show Boat follows the lives of characters living and working on the Cotton Blossom, a steamboat that brought entertainment to small Mississippi River towns from the years after the Civil War until the 1920s. It was first and foremost a great hit, running for some 572 performances, and it has been successfully revived many times. Its music was sophisticated and ambitious, but perhaps the most remarkable aspect was its casting: Kern and Hammerstein created the first truly integrated

show in the history of Broadway. Though they could not completely escape racist stereotypes, they dealt forthrightly with issues of racial prejudice and interracial love. Show Boat’s black characters (including the Joe, most famously played by bass Paul Robeson) are carefully drawn and are equal in importance to the white leads. One of the show’s greatest songs, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” is sung by several of the show’s black characters, but it is first sung by one of the show boat’s lead singers, Julie. It later turns out that Julie, who is light-skinned, is in fact a black woman “passing” as white… and whose marriage to a white man is illegal. “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,” sung in dialect, is a bluesy “torch song” about a woman who loves a man despite all his faults. _____ program notes ©2016 by J. Michael Allsen

For program page:

Gioacchino Rossini Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri

Sergei Rachmaninoff Symphony No.2 in E Minor, Op.27 — Adagio

Maurice Ravel Boléro

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Giacomo Puccini “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi

Luigi Arditi Il bacio

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), K.492

Franz Lehár “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß” from Giuditta

Leonard Bernstein “Glitter and be Gay” from Candide

Kern/Hammerstein “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” from Show Boat

Marisa Buchheit, soprano

Texts and translations

Puccini, “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi

O mio babbino caro, O my dear papa, mi piace è bello, bello; I like him, he’s beautiful, beautiful; vo’andare in Porta Rossa I want to go to Porta Rossa a comperar l’anello! and buy the ring! Sì, sì, ci voglio andare! Yes, yes, I want to go! E se l’amassi indarno, And if my love is in vain, andrei sul Ponte Vecchio, I would go up on the Ponte Vecchio, ma per buttarmi in Arno! only to throw myself in the River Arno. Mi struggo e mi tormento! I long for him and torment myself! O Dio, vorrei morir! O God, I’d like to die! Babbo, pietà, pietà! Papa, have pity, have pity!

Arditi, Il bacio (A Kiss)

Sulle labbra se potessi If I could only give you dolce un bacio ti darei; a kiss on your lips; tutte ti direi le dolcezze dell’amor, it would tell you all the delights of love, sempre assisa te d’appresso, lingering to speak to you mille gaudii ti direi! of a thousand joys! Ah! ti direi Ah! Thus it would speak to you, ed i palpiti udirei along with the replying che rispondono al mio cor. beating of my heart. Gemme e perle non desio, I do not desire gems or pearls, non son vaga d’altro affetto. nor do I seek others’ affections. Un tuo sguardo è il mio diletto, Your look is my delight, un tuo bacio è il mio tesor. your kiss is my treasure. Ah! Vieni! ah vien! Ah! Come! Ah! Come! Più non tardare a me! Do not me put me off! Ah vien! Nell’ebbrezza d’un Ah! Come! Let us enjoy love’s amplesso ch’io viva! Ah! life-giving intoxication. Ah!

Mozart, “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), K.492

Voi che sapete che cosa e amor, You who know what love is, donne, vedete s’io l’ho nel cor. ladies, see if I have it in my heart. Quello ch’io provo vi ridiro, I’ll tell you what I’m feeling— e per me nuovo, capir nol so. it’s new to me, and I understand nothing. Sento un affetto, pien di desir, I have a feeling, full of desire, ch’ora e diletto, ch’ora e martir. which is by turns delightful and miserable. Gelo e poi sento l’alma avvampar, I freeze and then feel my soul go up in flames,

e in un momento torno a gelar. then in a moment I turn back to ice. Ricerco un bene fuori di me, I’m searching for affection outside of myself, non so ch’il tiene, non so cos’e! I don’t know how to hold it, nor even what it is! Sospiro e gemo senza voler, I sigh and lament without wanting to, palpito e tremo senza saper, I twitter and tremble without knowing why, Non trovo pace notte ne di, I find peace neither night nor day, ma pur mi piace languir cosi. but still I rather enjoy suffering this way. Voi che sapete che cosa e amor, You who know what love is, donne, vedete s’io l’ho nel cor. ladies, see if I have it in my heart.

Lehár, “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß” from Giuditta

Ich weiß es selber nicht, I don’t understand it myself, warum man gleich von Liebe spricht, why they keep talking of love, wenn man in meiner Nähe ist, if they come near me, in meine Augen schaut und meine Hände küsst. if they look into my eyes and kiss my hand.

Ich weiß es selber nicht I don’t understand it myself, warum man von dem Zauber spricht, why they talk of “magic,” dem keiner widersteht, wenn er mich sieht you fight in vain, if you see me wenn er an mir vorüber geht. or if you should pass me by.

Doch wenn das rote Licht erglüht But if the red light is on zur mitternächt’gen Stund in the middle of the night und alle lauschen meinem Lied, and everybody listens to my song, dann wird mir klar der Grund: then it is plain to see:

Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß My lips, they kiss so hot, meine Glieder sind schmiegsam und weiß, my limbs, they are supple and white, in den Sternen da steht es geschrieben: in the stars it’s written for me: du sollst küssen, du sollst lieben! You should kiss! You should love!

Meine Füße sie schweben dahin, My feet, they glide and float, meine Augen sie locken und glüh’n my eyes, they lure and glow, und ich tanz’ wie im Rausch den ich weiß, and I dance as if drunk, for I know meine Lippen sie küssen so heiß! my lips, they kiss so hot!

In meinen Adern drin, In my veins run da rollt das Blut der Tänzerin the blood of a dancer, denn meine schöne Mutter war for my beautiful mother was the des Tanzes Konigin im gold’nen Alcazar. Queen of dance in the golden Alcazar.

Sie war so wunderschön, She was so very beautiful, ich hab’ sie oft im Traum geseh’n. I often saw her in my dreams: if she Schlug sie das Tamburin, zu wildem Tanz, struck the tambourine to her wild dance, dann sah man alle Augen glühn! all eyes were glowing admiringly!

Sie ist in mir aufs neu erwacht, She awakened this in me, ich hab’ das gleiche Los. and I have the same lot in life. Ich tanz’ wie sie um Mitternacht I dance like her at midnight, und fühl das eine bloß: and from deep within I feel:

Bernstein, “Glitter and be Gay” from Candide

Glitter and be gay that’s the part I play here I am in Paris, France forced to bend my soul to a sordid role victimized by bitter, bitter circumstance. Alas for me, had I remained beside my lady mother my virtue had remained unstained until my maiden hand was gained by some grand duke, or other.

Ah, ‘twas not to be — harsh necessity brought me to this gilded cage. Born to higher things here I droop my wings singing of a sorrow nothing can assuage.

And yet, of course, I rather like to revel, ha, ha! I have no strong objection to champagne, ha ha! My wardrobe is expensive as the devil, ha ha! Perhaps it is ignoble to complain — enough, enough of being basely tearful. I’ll show my noble stuff by being bright and cheerful.

Ha, Ha, Ha…

Pearls and ruby rings, ah, how can worldly things take the place of honor lost? Purchased, as they were, at such an awful cost! Bracelets, lavalieres, can they dry my tears? Can they blind my eyes from shame! Can the brightest broach shield me from reproach? Can the purest diamond purify my name?

And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha! I’m oh so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha! I rather like a 20 carat earring, ha ha! If I’m not pure, at least my jewels are.

Enough, enough, I’ll take that diamond necklace and show my noble stuff by being gay and reckless!

Ha, Ha, Ha…

Kern/Hammerstein, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” from Show Boat

Oh listen, sister, I love my mister man and I can’t tell you why there ain’t no reason why I should love that man: it must be somethin’ that the angels done plan. The chimbley’s smokin’, the roof is leakin’ in, but he don’t seem to care. He can be happy with jes’ a sip of gin; I even loves him when his kisses got gin.

Fish got to swim and birds got to fly, I got to love man till I die; can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.

Tell me he’s lazy, tell me he’s slow tell me I’m crazy, maybe, I know; can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.

When he goes away, that’s rainy day and when he comes back that day is fine: the sun will shine.

He can come home as late as can be,

home without him ain’t no home to me; can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.