Me Israel Aestra JULU 3-QUGUSU 8 1979 Me Israel Assam Founoed Bu A.Z

me Israel Aestra JULU 3-QUGUSU 81979 me Israel Assam FOunoeD bu a.z8. ppopes JULU 3-aUGUSB 1979 Member of the European Association of Music Festivals Executive Committee: Asher Ben-Natan, Chairman Menahem Avidom Gary Bertini Jacob Bistritzky Gideon Paz Honorary Presidium: ZEVULUN HAMMER GIDEON PATT Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism TEDDY KOLLEK SHLOMO LAHAT -Minister of Education and Culture ---Mayor ofJerusalem Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo Leah Porath Ya'acov Mishori Jacob Steinberger J. Bistritzky Director, the Israel Festival. Director, The Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. Thirty years of professional activity in the field ofculture and arts, as Director of the Department of International Cultural Relations in the Ministry of Culture and Arts, Warsaw; Director of the Polish Cultural Institute, Budapest: Director of the Frédéric Chopin Institute, Warsaw. Mr. Bistritzky's work has encompassed all aspects of the developmentofculture, the arts and mass media: promotion, organization and management of international festivals and competitions. Organizer of Chopin competitions in Warsaw and International Chopin year 1960 under auspices of U.N.E.S.C.O. Artistic Advisor —Prof. Gary Bertini The Public Committee and Council: Gershon Achituv Menahem Avidom Yitzhak Avni Mordechai Bar On Asher Ben-Natan Gary Bertini Jacob Bistritzky Abe Cohen Sacha Daphna Finance Committee: Menahem Avidom, Chairman Yigal Shaham Micha Tal Meir de-Shalit Walter Eytan Festival Staff: Shmuel Federmann Yehuda Fickler Daniel Gelmond Dr. Reuven Hecht Dr. Paul J. Jacobi Moshe Koi Arye Lipshitz Dr. J. Melkman-Mechnian Dr. Arye Muscat Uri Ofer Gideon Paz Eliezer Peri Gershon Plotkin Orna Porat Leah Porath Daniel Recanati Dr. Elimelech Rimalt Moshe Ron Dr. Herzl Rosenblum Shalom Rosenfeld Moshe Sanbar Prof. Michael Sela Michal Smoira-Cohn Jacob Steinberger Uri Toeplitz Assistant Director: Ilana Parnes Director of Finance: Isaac Levinbuk Secretariat: Rivka Bar-Nahor, Paula Gluck Public Relations: Irit Mitelpunkt Organization of Performances in Caesarea: Shmuel Zemach Main Ticket Distribution: "Rokoko" ticket office Feature articles and Editing: Michael Ohad Translations: Amatzya Amon Editorial Assistance: Ilana Parnes, Rivka Bar-Nahor Design of Festival brochure, programmes, posters Printed in Hamakor Press Ltd, Jerusalem Printing Coordinator: Ignac Stefanicki Publicity: Government Advertising Department Official Carrier: EI-AI Israel Airlines &leaflets: Raphie Etgar Official Travel Agency: Conventions (Kopel Tours) Ltd. Acknowledgement The Israel Festival Association gratefully acknowledges the assistance rendered in the preparation of the Festival by the: Australian Embassy British Embassy Diplomatic Representation of Greece Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany The British Council The Italian Cultural Institute Cultural and Scientific Relations Division Jacob Tsur Prof. Arieh Vardi Yaakov Yannai Dr. Yosef Yzraeli Gabriel Zifroni -Ministry of Foreign Affairs EI-AI Israel Airlines Israel Government Tourist Offices Israel Philharmonic Mehta/Pavarotti Cameran Singers/ltai 7Sat. Nabucco/Verdi Nabucco/Verdi Israel Philharmonic Mehta/Pavarotti Israel Baroque Players Cameran Singers/ltai 89Sun. Israel Baroque Players Eric's Puppet Company The Dybbuk/Anski The Dybbuk/Anski Mon. 10 Tue. 11 Wed. Cinderella/Prokofiev 12 Thu. Cinderella/ Prokofiev Boris Berman Siegfried Palm 14 Sat. 15 Sun. 16 Mon. Cinderella/Prokofiev Rinat Choir/Ericson Siegfried Palm Boris Berman Jerus. Symphony Workshop (morning) Jerus. Symphony Workshop Eric's Puppet Company Compagnia Ferruccio Soleri (2 performances) 17 Tue. Christa Ludwig Rinat Choir/ Ericson 18 Wed. 19 Thu. Compagnia Ferruccio Soleri (2 perfor.) The Dybbuk/Anski Quartetto Italiano Christa Ludwig 21 Sat. 22 Sun. Lysistrata/ Aristophanes Lysistrata Quartetto Italiano Fried -Vered 23 Mon. Lysistrata 24 Tue. Quartetto Italiano Brooks Kerr/ Jazz Every Good Boy... Marisa Robles/Harp 25 Wed. Every Good Boy.../ Stoppard Pena -Bonell 26 Thu. Guitar Recital Marisa Robles/Harp 28 Sat. 29 Sun. 30 Mon. 31 Tue. Pena -Bonel Paco Pena Flamenco Co. London Dance Paco Pena Flamenco Co. London Dance 245678Thu. Sat. Nuova Compagnia Inbal/Bible Seminar Bat-Dor/Bible Seminar London Dance/Seminar Bathsheva/Seminar Nuova Compagnia Sun. Mon. Tue. Wed. Nuova Compagnia Australian Ballet Australian Ballet 29 Sun. Marisa Robles/Harp London Dance Paco Pena Flamenco Co. Paco Pena Flamenco Nuova Compagnia Kibbutz Dance Co. The influence of Ur, Babylon and Egypt on our early cultural development was considerable, less so that of Greece and its Olympian mythology, which our forebears resisted with vigour. Apollo the sun god, Dionysos the god of wine and the arena games were foreign to the Jewish spirit. When Antiochus of Syria attempted to Hellenize Jerusalem by force, he provoked the Maccabean revolt. Having wiped out of the Maccabees, Herod did impose Hellenization, and we may Five thousand years of Mediterrgpgan civilization in asingle festival of music, dance and drama! Would it not have been simpler to write an encyclopaedia, in twelve volumes? In the introduction toKldseph and His Brethren", Thomas Mann considers several of the stories in Genesis —the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel -and suggests they were common to many peoples and cultures. His theory is supported by the archaeologists who have shown that biblical legends had their roots in the lore of neighbouring societies. Noah, for example, that "just man and perfect in his generations", woiiljd appear to be none other than Utnapishtim who figures in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgameslji'-hi.sstory has itsorigins in Urof the Chaldees, Abraham's thus conjecture that performance of "Lysistrata" in the Roman aamphitheatre at Caesarea in July 1979 is not necessarily the play's Caesarea premiere. It may well have been performed there long ago for the entertainment of some Roman governor. Be that as it may, Aristophanes' comedy, opening as it does with the Athenian women's decision to cut down on their wifely duties and closing with the peace birthplace. Moses listened to the One God addressing him "out of the midst of the ijysh" and Akhnaton, king of Egypt, who rejected the celebrations, is atimely salute to the peace signed by Israel and Egypt. This most ancient example of pacifist theatre will not be presented in the style of 411 BCE (the year of its Athenian premiere); ithas been transposedtothebeginningofthetwentiethcentury. In another respect, however, director Evangelitos has remained true to the Aristophanic tradition: all the female characters are portrayed, as in the original production, by male actors. gods of his fathers, also prayed to one god, and wrote hymns to the sun. It was not by chance that Thomas Mann identified as Akhnaton the Pharaoh whose dreams were interpreted by Joseph. But if our business is witfi the Israel Festival, let us also recall that the Roman amphitheatre at Caesarea, where the Deutsche Oper Berlin will present "Nabucco", an opera describing the destruction of the First Temple The Romans used to refer to the Mediterranean as mare nostrum, "our by Nebuchadnezzar, was built by HerodHess than before the destruction of the Second Temple. ahundred years sea." That was during arare period of history when one power, to the exclusion of all others, held sway from Gibraltar to Palestine. Nearly 2000 years later, Benjamin Disraeli strovetoestablish British hegemony No nationcreates cultures and unaffected by them. The Land of Israel was, from the dawn of time, vast highway linking kingdoms, continents and aculture invacuo, wholly detached from surrounding over the Mediterranean the waves" and almost achieved his object, when he acquired for the British government controllingshare intheSuez Canal and prevented -thdse were the days when "Brittania ruled a-civilizations. To thesouth lay Egypt. From the north cametheAssyrians and Babylonians, the Persians, Greeksand Romans. Abraham journeyed to the Land of Canaan from Ur, where many of the laws written into athe Czar from taking control of Turkey. No matter which nation formally controlled the Mediterranean, there was always another powerthatthreatened thefortunes of seafarers and the Torah were promulgated centuries before the birth of Moses. The Philistines arrived by sea, having abandoned the great cultural centre of Creteand, incidentally, giving the lands name, Palestine. They were invading the coastal plain of Israel as Joshua crossed the Jordan and shipping in the Sea: the pirates. When Goethe as young man visited aItaly he was warned notto sail from Naples to Sicily since those who did so were never sure of reaching their destination and frequently ended up in the slave markets ofTunis. Piracy enters into the story of Rossini's "L'ltaliana in Algeri", to be performed in the Festival by captured Jericho; areminder of some of the troubles they caused our ¡¿forefathers is contained in ttle opera "Samson and Delilah," which we were able to see not long ago in Caesarea under Zubin Mehta's direction. The merchant cities of the Phoenicia®Tyre and Sidon, are of greater antiquity than the Philistine towns Gaza and Ashkelon. Phoenician ships, moreover, ruled the Mediter^iean long before the Greeks' and it was from the Phoenicians that the Greeks learned the secrets of glass-making and received their alphabet. Cultural as well as commercial relations between the Phoenician cities and the kingdom of Israel were very close in the reign of King Solomon, who imported from Hiram, King of Tyre, cedarwdfed and gold for construction of the Temple. Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of theSidonians, was married to Ahab, King of Israel, anil brought to his capital, Samaria, the cult of Baal and other Sidonian pastimes. It was those same Sidonians, with their compatriots from Tyre, who built the great north-African trading centre of Carthage, which would one day challenge Rome's supremacy inKe Mediterranean. Eric ’sPuppetCompany. Onedoubts iftheAlgerians,acrossthesea from major contribution to their Rossini's Italy, see in his operatic frolic acultural heritage. The Algiers of the opera is as absurd as Alice's Wonderland, though the subject of the European maiden whisked off to the harem of an oriental despot is ever-popular with writers and readers alike (and at least one other composer used it: Mozart in his "Seraglio"). Rossini's treatment is not cheap sensationalism; it is pure parody. Isabella escapes from Algiers with her lover Lindoro, after turning the Bey's harem upside down. Italy has an important place in this year's Festival. The commedia del I'arteweare tosee is in thehands of Ferruccio Soleri and company, who will give aselection ofcharacteristic pieces. Harlequin, the madcap from Bergamo, is of course the heart of the matter and we shall have various glimpses of his career, as he advances from humble odd-job man to "Servant of Two Masters"; with him will appear his traditional companions, Don Magnifico, Brighella, Columbine and Smeraldine. In the programme to be given by the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Populare, it is Harlequin's cousin Pulcinella who holds the centre of the stage, though here the emphasis is not on comedy, but on song Our neighbours, the Egyptians, accorded their kings eternal life, both before and after death, and perpetuated their images in carvings, sculptures and paintings. Thus v^e have agood idea of what some of them looked life: Akhnaton, for example, Tutankhamen and Ramses II. Among our own people, on the other hand, the second commandment forbade graven i-ages and consequently no likeness exists of David or Solomon. Yet the heroes of the Bible fertilized the imagination of poets, artists and composers in every generation. The world today has its likenesses of Moses and David in the sculptures of (with authentic instruments and execution). Each song tells astory, but let us not for moment confuse these songs with the Neapolitan asugar-plums which Caruso and Gigli made so popular. These are the songstheordinary folk ofNaples have sungsince thesixteenthcentury, songs of protest and insurrection, songs about bakers and thieves and, of course, love songs. Michaelangelo musical identity in the spirituals that the negro slaves sang in the cotton fields of the southern United States. In our century the Bible has been fruitful source of ideas for choreographers and in the -and gives them (and many another biblical figure) aWe shall be given Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini ataste of classical Italian opera —Rossini, Bellini, —by the celebrated Italian tenor Luciano aPavarotti. And if we have mentioned opera, then we must turn to the majoreventofthe Festival, Verdi's "Nabucco", tobe performed by the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. Ostensibly theopera relates thestory ofthefall International Seminar on the Bible in Dance we shall be hearing about someofthese: Adamand Eve, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Ruth the Moabitess and Job -from the Old Testament; and Salome, Judas Iscariot and Miriam mother of Jfsus from the New. of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the destruction of the FirstTemple by Nebuchadnezzar. It was not the historical narrative, however, that brought "Nabucco" such resounding success and made Verdi's ahousehold name throughout Italy. The Italian patriots who attended the first performance at La Scala in 1842, were quick to associate the plight of the Jewish exiles weeping by the rivers of Babylon with their own situation under Austrian domination. Verdi's heart-stirring melodies (which covered up the weaknesses of melodramatic libretto) amoved them to tears. When, at the end of the opera, Nebuchadnezzar proclaims that he will rebuild the Temple, they cheered. The chorus "Va pensiero, sull'ali dórate" became the unofficial anthem of the Italian struggle for independence. The Mediterranean pirates who contribute to the general merriment of "L'ltaliana in Algeri", played amuch more menacing role in the life of the Spanish classicist Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes started his career as soldier and, while on his way home from the aBattle of Lepanto, was taken prisoner by pirates and held for ransom in Algiers for five years. It was after this gruelling experience that he applied himself to writing. He began working on what became the most celebrated of Spanish literary works, "Don Quixote", while he was in prison. Now, in ahappy blend of arts and cultures, "Don Quixote" comes to the Israel Festival to be danced by the Australian Ballet to choreography by the Russian Rudolf Nureyev. To the best of our knowledge there were no cultural ties between Israel and the Iberian Peninsula in the days of the First and Second Temples. But in medieval times, popularly known as the "Dark Ages", aglorious chapter was written in the annals of Jewish science and literature, not in the hostile Christian north of Spain, soon to burn or expel its Jews, but in the tolerant Muslim Kingdom of Cordova. In the ancient ballads of Spain, Andalusia is depicted as Eden, the Kingdom of Cordova as land of miracles. In the tenth century Cordova was pearl among the cities of Europe, glittering aGarden of aaacentre, where Jewish and Arab scholars collaborated in their study of medicine, mathematics and philosophy. Hasdai ibn Shaprut was the Caliph's physician and, later on, his political adviser and minister of finance. When Cordova had fallen and Granada took its place, Shmuel Hanagid filled similar eminent positions. The great Jewish philosopher, known as the Rambam, was born in Cordova, though he was forced to flee Spain when the Jewish community was swept away. As the Jewish poets had been stimulated by the landscape and atmosphere of Andalusia, so were the gypsies who arrived there when the flower of Muslim and Jewish civilization had long since withered. Spokesman of Andalusian music Paco Peña will be appearing in the Festival in the dual capacity of guitarist and director of his Flamenco Dance Company. The company offers aprogramme of what Peña calls "flamenco puro", as different from commercialised flamenco as chalk from the proverbial cheese. We have not touched uponthemusic that is to be heard in the Festival, works from the Baroque period in Italy and France by Couperin, Scarlatti, Frescobaldi and Vivaldi. Still, though only an encyclopaedia could dojustice to theuntoldwealth ofculture with which the peoples oftheMediterranean have enriched human society during five millenia, nevertheless afestival of opera, ballet,theatre and music can create asense of the many cultural cross-streams that were the making of Mediterranean civilization. THE DEUTSCHE OPER BERUH NABUCCO Opera in Four Acts Music by Giuseppe Verdi, Libretto by Temistocle Solerà ■•k1............ 1Under the Patronage of the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, His Excellency, Mr. Klaus Schuetz July 5, 8, at 8.30 p.m., Roman Theatre, Caesarea July 7, at 9 p.m., Roman Theatre, Caesarea *• 1r_ ____ >The Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra The Deutsche Oper Berlin Chorus Conductor Jesus Lopez Cobos Director Gustav Rudolf Seltner Design and Costumes Filippo Sanjust Chorus Conductor Walter Hagen-Groll Stage setting and technical production Lighting and Amplifying system Zilberboim Reuven Picarsky-Greenspan The Cast: Nabucco, King of Babylon Ingvar Wixell, baritone Michail Svetlev, tenor Bengt Rundgren/Harald Stamm, bass Angeles Gulin, soprano Ismaele, nephew of Zedecia, King of Jerusalem Zaccaria, the High Priest Abigail, slave, believed to be the eldest daughter of Nabbuco Fenena, daughter of Nabucco Carol Wyatt, soprano High Priest of Baal Tomislav Neralic, bass Abdallo, old retainer of Nabucco Volker Horn, tenor Rahel, sister of Zaccaria Yoko Numura, soprano Pupils of the ballet school of the Deutsche Oper Berlin Hebrew and Babylonian soldiers, Levites, Hebrew and Babylonian women, magicians, crowd The opera is sung in Italian Intermission after the third scene BY THE RIVERS OF BABYION Giuseppe Verdi detested any kind of publicity. He consistently refused to be interviewed. He never responded to attacks on him in the press. He rejected suggestions about writing his memoirs: "For fifty years Verdi, who considered himself to have done with opera, refused even to look at the libretto. Merelli, however, was insistent and stuffed the thick wad of manuscript under his arm. "I came home in depression and flung the manuscript on the table. It happened to fall open and despite myself my attention was caught by line from the exiles' chorus: 'Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate' (Go, thought, on golden wings'). read one page, then another, then remembered had decided never to write again. went to bed, put out the light, but that chorus gave me no peace. got up, read Solera libretto, then read it again, knew it by heart." The sequel to this story is now astate of people have put up with my music. Why should Inow condemn them ato read my prose?" Yet every rule has its exception and in 1879 Verdi's friend, the publisher Giulio Ricordi, was permitted to write down the composer recollections ofhisearlydays in Milan. Amongthe memorieshe revived <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">I</li><li style="flex:1">I</li></ul>sII’s were the terrible events he lived through as ayoung family man. It is and again. By dawn history. Isome forty years prior to his conversation with Ricordi and he is working on his comic opera, "Un Giorno di Regno." He falls ill and is unable to pay the rent. His young wife Margherita slips secretly out of

Me Israel Aestra JULU 3-QUGUSU 8 1979 Me Israel Assam Founoed Bu A.Z

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