Season 2020111111----2020202011112222 The Philadelphia Orchestra Thursday, March 22, at 8:00 Friday, March 232323,23 , at 222:002:00:00:00 Saturday, March 242424,24 , at 8:00 James Conlon Conductor Mozart Overtures to Don Giovanni, K. 527, Idomeneo, K. 366, and The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492 Mozart Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 (“Prague”) I. Adagio—Allegro II. Andante III. Presto Intermission DvoDvořákřákřákřák Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 I. Allegro maestoso II. Poco adagio III. Scherzo: Vivace IV. Finale: Allegro This program runs approximately 1 hour, 60 minutes. The March 22 concert is sponsored by the Louis N. Cassett Foundation. James Conlon is currently music director of Los Angeles Opera, the Ravinia Festival (summer home of the Chicago Symphony), and the Cincinnati May Festival, America’s oldest choral festival. He has served as principal conductor of the Paris National Opera (1995 to 2004); general music director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989 to 2002), where he was music director of both the Gürzenich Orchestra-Cologne Philharmonic and the Cologne Opera; and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983 to 1991). Since his first appearance as a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in 1976, Mr. Conlon has led more than 250 performances there and has appeared at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Teatro di Roma, and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. This coming summer he continues a five-year series of six Mozart operas with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia; this follows a complete cycle of the Mozart piano concertos. In an effort to raise awareness of the significance of the lesser-known works of composers suppressed by the Nazi regime, Mr. Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of this music throughout Europe and North America. His work on behalf of these composers led to the creation of the OREL Foundation, a resource on the topic for music lovers, musicians, and scholars. Committed to working with pre-professional musicians, he has devoted much time to teaching at the Juilliard School, the New World Symphony, Ravinia’s Steans Institute for Young Artists, the Aspen Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Cliburn Competition, and the Colburn Conservatory. Mr. Conlon’s extensive discography and videography include releases on the EMI, Erato, Capriccio, Decca, and Sony Classical labels. He has won two Grammy awards and conducted the soundtrack for several opera movies, including Kenneth Branagh’s The Magic Flute. Mr. Conlon holds several honorary doctorates, and he has received many awards, including France’s Légion d’Honneur in 2002. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1976. FRAMING THE PROGRAM “Nowhere is [Mozart’s] music better understood and executed than in Prague.” So proclaimed a local critic in response to an all-Mozart concert given in the Bohemian capital a couple years after the composer’s death in 1791. Mozart had visited the city several times and enjoyed some of the greatest professional successes there. In January 1787 he offered the public his most recent and ambitious symphony to date, now known as the “Prague” Symphony, and returned later that year to conduct the premiere of his new opera Don Giovanni. The program today opens with a trio of overtures, first to that masterpiece before moving on seamlessly to his first great dramatic hit ( Idomeneo from 1781) and to another favorite with the Prague public: The Marriage of Figaro. Antonín Dvořák and his older contemporary Bedřich Smetana were the preeminent Czech composers of the 19th century. They both aspired, however, to be viewed not just as colorful exotics but rather as serious composers within a broader European mainstream. Dvořák, who would eventually spend three years in America, achieved great acclaim abroad. His deeply felt and brooding Seventh Symphony (the second of his nine published in his lifetime) was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society and premiered in London in 1885, the first time he conducted abroad and where it proved a triumph. Parallel Events 1780 Mozart Idomeneo Music Gluck Flute Concerto Literature Claudius Lieder für das Volk Art Copley Death of Chatham History Joseph II becomes Holy Roman Emperor 1717178617 868686 Mozart Symphony No. 38 Music Dittersdorf Doctor und Apotheker Literature Bourgoyne The Heiress Art Reynolds The Duchess of Devonshire History Shays Rebellion 1884 Dvořák Symphony No. 7 Music Brahms Symphony No. 4 Literature Ibsen The Wild Duck Art Seurat Une Baignade, Asnières History First subway, in London Overtures to Don Giovanni, Idomeneo, and The Marriage of Figaro Wolfgang Amadè Mozart Born in Salzburg, January 27, 1756 Died in Vienna, December 5, 1791 An overture in Mozart’s time was often identical to a symphony; operas began with a “sinfonia,” usually in a fast-slow-fast arrangement of movements. Eventually symphonies grew in size and rose to the highest rank of instrumental music in which Beethoven and later 19th-century composers would achieve some of their greatest statements. The overture also began to assume a new role. It no longer served merely as an instrumental attention-getter, functioning to settle down the audience, but rather would introduce what was about to happen dramatically in the theater. Some of Mozart’s overtures to his mature operas, such as Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and The Magic Flute, offer a foretaste of musical passages that will be heard in the course of the opera. Other composers did similar things, although the practice eventually degenerated (at least in Richard Wagner’s later assessment) to mere potpourris, previews of catchy tunes as are now familiar from Broadway shows. Don Giovanni is perhaps the most integrated of Mozart’s opera overtures in that the dramatic introduction (andante) in a frightening D minor returns in the final act when the statue of the Commandatore (who Don Giovanni killed in the first scene of the opera) arrives for dinner and the unrepentant title character is dragged to hell. In contrast to this harrowing introduction the following molto allegro is pure joy, reminding us that this is supposedly a comic opera. Il dissoluto punito, o sia il Don Giovanni (The Dissolute Punished, or Don Giovanni) was premiered as a drama giocoso (jocular drama), mixing comedy and tragedy. It was the composer’s second collaboration with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. After the enormous success of their Marriage of Figaro in Prague, Mozart was commissioned to write a new work for the Bohemian capital, where he conducted the first performance of Don Giovanni on October 29, 1787—it proved a highlight of his career. Although Mozart had written most of the opera in Vienna he added some numbers while in rehearsal in Prague and composed the Overture last (legend has it the very day before the premiere). Idomeneo dates from seven years earlier, when Mozart was 24, and is considered by many his first dramatic masterpiece. (He had written his initial opera at age 11.) Premiered in Munich in January 1781, it was a piece Mozart cared about deeply and later revised for performances in Vienna. The story concerns Idomeneo, the King of Crete, who as he returns in triumph from the Trojan War is threatened by a storm at sea. To appease the god Neptune, he pledges to offer in sacrifice the first person he encounters at home, which turns out to be his own son, Idamante. Complicated by a love triangle between Idamante, his beloved Ilia, and the exiled Princess Elettra, who also loves him, everything ends up happily in the end when Idomeneo abdicates his throne to his son and Ilia. The Overture opens with majestic gestures befitting an opera about royalty (Mozart would later begin La clemenza di Tito, written for Prague, in a similar way): full orchestra in a bright D major. The second theme, in A minor, foreshadows the darker side of the opera to follow and the Overture has a wonderful fade out to end. (In the opera this leads directly to a scene for Ilia, while in the performances today the three overtures are performed without pause.) Mozart finished The Marriage of FigaroFigaro, the first of his three operas with Da Ponte, in 1786. They based the work on Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s revolutionary play, which was the middle offering in a trilogy containing The Barber of Seville and The Guilty Mother. Because of Figaro ’s pointed political and erotic content (less evident in the opera than in the original), Beaumarchais had difficulty getting the work performed in France. Mozart, in turn, took a risk in tackling a play banned in Austria. As with the two other overtures on the concert today, first things came last: Mozart wrote the Overture shortly before conducting the successful premiere on May 1, 1786, in Vienna’s Burgtheater. The great popularity of Figaro became especially evident at the Prague premiere later that year. Mozart recounted, “Here they talk about nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. No opera is drawing like Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro. ” The plot takes off a few years after the ending of The Barber of Seville, in which Figaro’s cunning successfully united Count Almaviva with his beloved Rosina. The upstairs/downstairs tale of the Count and Countess and their servants Figaro and Susanna involves a day of intrigue as the young couple prepare for their wedding. But when Susanna informs him that the Count is pursuing her, as he apparently does all young women, Figaro vows revenge. By the end everything works out just fine, with lessons learned by all, but there are many complications along the way.