DIE WALKÜRE ACT 1 OPERA IN CONCERT 25 AUGUST 2018 Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall CONCERT PROGRAM Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis conductor Eva-Maria Westbroek soprano (Sieglinde) Frank Van Aken tenor (Siegmund) Daniel Sumegi bass (Hunding) Wagner Siegfried Idyll INTERVAL Wagner Die Walküre Act 1 Pre-concert talk Join us for a pre-concert conversation with Monash University music expert, Andrys Onsman, inside Hamer Hall from 6.15pm. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. This concert features surtitles. In consideration of your fellow patrons, the MSO thanks you for silencing and dimming the light on your phone. The MSO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which it is performing. MSO pays its respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who mso.com.au may be in attendance. (03) 9929 9600 2 MELBOURNE SYMPHONY SIR ANDREW DAVIS ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR Established in 1906, the Melbourne Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew arts leader and Australia’s oldest Davis is also Music Director and professional orchestra. Chief Principal Conductor of the Lyric Opera Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has of Chicago. He is Conductor Laureate been at the helm of MSO since 2013. of both the BBC Symphony Orchestra Engaging more than 4 million people and the Toronto Symphony, where he each year, the MSO reaches diverse has also been named interim Artistic audiences through live performances, Director until 2020. recordings, TV and radio broadcasts In a career spanning more than and live streaming. Its international 40 years he has conducted virtually audiences include China, where MSO all the world’s major orchestras has performed in 2012, 2016 and and opera companies, and at the most recently in May 2018, Europe major festivals. Recent highlights (2014) and Indonesia, where in 2017 have included Die Walküre in a new it performed at the UNESCO World production at Chicago Lyric. Heritage Site, Prambanan Temple. Sir Andrew’s many CDs include The MSO performs a variety of Messiah nominated for a 2018 concerts ranging from symphonic Grammy, Bliss’ The Beatitudes, performances at its home, Hamer Hall and a recording with the Bergen at Arts Centre Melbourne, to its annual Philharmonic of Vaughan Williams’ free concerts at Melbourne’s largest Job/Symphony No.9 nominated for outdoor venue, the Sidney Myer Music a 2018 BBC Music Magazine Award. Bowl. The MSO also delivers innovative With the MSO he has just released and engaging programs and digital a third recording in the ongoing tools to audiences of all ages through Richard Strauss series, featuring the its Education and Outreach initiatives. Alpine Symphony and Till Eulenspiegel. 3 EVA-MARIA WESTBROEK FRANK VAN AKEN SOPRANO TENOR Eva-Maria Westbroek has appeared Dutch singer Frank van Aken made at opera houses such as Bayreuth, the his professional debut as Macduff Opéra National de Paris, Vienna State in Macbeth at the Nederlandse Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and La Reisopera, followed by his debut in Scala in Milan, concert halls such as Rome as Cavaradossi in Tosca. His the Concertgebouw and Royal Albert Italian repertoire also includes Otello Hall, and at festivals such as Aix-en- and he has appeared in operas by Provence, France. Her signature roles Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Among include Sieglinde in Die Walküre, the great Wagner roles, he has Maddalena in Andrea Chénier and the performed Parsifal in Frankfurt and title roles in Jenůfa, Manon Lescaut, Turin, and Siegmund in Die Walküre Katya Kabanova, and Riccardo at La Scala and the Met. Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini. Frank van Aken has also appeared at Recent appearances have included major houses such as Bayreuth, Teatro Giorgetta in Il tabarro at the Bavarian Regio and Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del State Opera, Munich, and Katerina Liceu, and worked with conductors Ismailova (a signature role) in Lady including Petrenko, Barenboim and Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Royal Opera Thielemann. House, Covent Garden conducted by Recent appearances include the Antonio Pappano. Recordings include title roles in Tannhäuser and Parsifal the Metropolitan Opera’s Walküre and at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, premiere release of Mark-Anthony and an Opera Gala (with Eva-Maria Turnage’s Anna Nicole. Westbroek) at Scheveningen’s Festival Classique. 4 DANIEL SUMEGI BASS Daniel Sumegi has carved out an impressive international career with over one hundred roles in his repertoire, having performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden and the Paris Opera, as well as major opera companies across the United States, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. Recent appearances have included the world premiere of Manchurian Candidate (Minnesota Opera), The Pearl Fishers (OA Sydney), Eugene Onegin (OA Melbourne), Der Ring des Nibelungen (Melbourne, Seattle, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles), Billy Budd (Los Angeles), Salome (Washington, Hong Kong) and Götterdämmerung (Strasbourg and Tokyo). Daniel Sumegi appears on CD in Seattle Opera’s acclaimed Ring cycle, and on DVD in Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni, and the historic condensed Ring cycle from Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires. 5 PROGRAM NOTES that of Brünnhilde’s sleep. There is a second theme, not from the opera, based on an old German lullaby, and RICHARD WAGNER later the wind instruments present (1813-1883) the theme associated with the words Siegfried Idyll ‘Siegfried, Treasure of the World’, from the opera’s love duet. We hear the horn The Siegfried Idyll reveals a touchingly melody associated with the young gentle and domestic side of a composer Siegfried as hero, and the theme of who often displayed the opposite. the woodbird who leads Siegfried to Wagner’s full title for the piece was Brünnhilde’s fire-surrounded rock. Tribschen Idyll, with Fidi’s Birdsong and Although it began as private chamber Orange Sunrise, as a Symphonic Birthday music, the Siegfried Idyll is really Greeting from Richard to Cosima. an early example of the symphonic Tribschen is the villa near the Swiss town poem, a genre invented by Liszt of Lucerne where Wagner was living with and developed by Richard Strauss. his wife, Cosima, whom he had recently Wagner here depends less on an married when her divorce from Hans von extraneous program than either of Bülow was finalised. She already had these composers. The first theme, two daughters by Wagner, and in 1869 in fact, comes from a planned string a son was born, Siegfried, known in the quartet Richard had promised to Cosima family circle as Fidi. On Christmas Day in the days of their first love. Only later 1870, which was also Cosima’s birthday, was it incorporated into the opera she awoke to the strains of music. As Siegfried. Cosima recalled Richard the music died away, Richard came into telling her that ‘all that he had set out the room and offered Cosima the score to do was to work the theme which of the ‘symphonic birthday poem’. The had come to him in Starnberg (where 13 musicians stood on various levels of we were living together), and which the staircase of Tribschen. They were he had promised me as a quartet, into rehearsed secretly by the young Hans a morning serenade, and then he had Richter (later to become famous as a unconsciously woven our whole life conductor), who played horn, and also into it – Fidi’s birth, my recuperation, the brief trumpet part. Fidi’s bird, etc. As Schopenhauer said, this is the way a musician works – he The Siegfried Idyll is a kind of pendant expresses life in a language which to the music drama Siegfried, on which reason does not understand.’ Wagner had been working, and many of its themes are to be found in the Abridged from a note © David Garrett opera. The peaceful melody with which The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra first it begins is associated in the opera’s performed this work on 25 August 1939 under last act with Brünnhilde’s yielding, her conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, and most recently on 27-29 August 2009 with Sir Andrew Davis. giving up of memories of immortality for love of Siegfried. Another theme, appearing in counterpoint with it, is 6 RICHARD WAGNER of set-pieces – arias, interludes and so (1813-1883) on. By Act I of Die Walküre, however, Die Walküre: Act I the ideals of Opera and Drama have been largely met. The cross-referencing Eva-Maria Westbroek soprano effect of the leitmotifs gives the music (Sieglinde) an intense unity, and the vocal writing Frank Van Aken tenor (Siegmund) responds sensitively to the content of Daniel Sumegi bass (Hunding) the text – here in a scenario which is almost claustrophobically intimate. Die The Ring cycle grew out of Wagner’s Walküre was completed in 1856 and idea for an opera called Siegfrieds Tod first presented in 1870. In 1876 it was (Siegfried’s Death), the text of which he seen as part of the first Ring cycle at sketched in 1848. Much of this material Wagner’s theatre in Bayreuth. would end up in Götterdämmerung The story so far: (The Twilight of the Gods), the last In Das Rheingold, the Nibelung dwarf opera in the cycle. Wagner found that Alberich steals the gold guarded on the he needed to trace the Teutonic legend river’s bed by the Rhinemaidens. With further and further back, ultimately it he fashions a magic ring which allows producing a sequence of four operas him to enslave his fellow Nibelungs. which, as he once put it, contain ’the Meanwhile two giants, Fafner and Fasolt, world’s end and its beginning’. These have completed the building of Valhalla, are linked by a web of musical tags or the castle of Wotan and his fellow gods.