LORRAINE AT EMMANUEL CELEBRATING THE LIVES OF CRAIG SMITH AND LORRAINE HUNT LIEBERSON ARIAS FROM BACH HANDEL HANDEL CANTATAS HERCULES HERCULES THTHEE ORCHORCHESTRAESTRA OF EMMANUEL MUSIC Pilgrim’s Progress Window AND at Emmanuel Church, Boston, CRAIG SMITH AND JOHN HARBISON where Emmanuel Music is AV2130 the Ensemble-in-Residence Page 36 Page 1 PMS PMS 000 000 0 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) 1 from Cantata BWV 30: “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” (c. 1738) 8:46 George Frideric Handel (1685–1759): Hercules (HWV 60, 1744-5) Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings the role of Dejanira 2 recit. O Hercules! Why art thou absent from me? (Act 1 Scene 1) 0:46 3 aria The world when day’s career is run (Act 1 Scene 1) 4:38 4 recit. Then I am lost! O dreadful oracle! (Act 1 Scene 2) 0:54 5 aria There in myrtle shades reclined (Act 1 Scene 2) 3:26 Shannon Snapp, continuo cello 6 recit. Ye lying omens, hence! (Act 1 Scene 3) 0:10 7 aria Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away (Act 1 Scene 3) 4:31 8 recit. It must be so! fame speaks aloud my wrongs (Act 2 Scene 2) with Jayne West, soprano (Iole) 0:51 9 aria When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears (Act 2 Scene 2) 4:46 Danielle Maddon and Lena Wong, violins 10 recit. O glorious pattern of heroic deeds! (Act 2 Scene 5) 0:38 11 aria Resign thy club and lion’s spoils (Act 2 Scene 5) 6:06 12 aria Cease, ruler of the day, to rise (Act 2 Scene 6) 3:59 13 duet Joys of freedom, joys of pow’r (Act 2 Scene 8) 3:56 with Jayne West, soprano (Iole) 14 Mad Scene: Where shall I fly? Where hide this guilty head? (Act 3 Scene 3) 6:39 Johann Sebastian Bach 15 from Cantata BWV 33: “Wie fürchtsam wankten meine Schritte” (c. 1724) 10:43 John Harbison, conductor Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano The Orchestra of Emmanuel Music John Harbison and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (1992) Craig Smith, conductor 1 – 14 Page 2 Page 3 PMS PMS 000 000 0 LORRAINE HUNT LIEBERSON INTRODUCTION FROM JOHN HARBISON – a personal memoir by Craig Smith – As Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s voice emerges from fraction, generated a special warmth. Lorraine was I first met Lorraine Hunt in 1981. I was conducting marvelous combination of comedy and pathos she the Emmanuel Music orchestra at the beginning of appreciated everywhere for her superb preparation, a long run of Handel’s Orlando at the American brought to that complex role. this CD, it recalls her stepping out of this very her emotional daring, her absolute musicianship: orchestra to begin her career as a singer, stepping But Craig and the Emmanuel musicians knew best Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts These arias constitute only a small part of out but never losing contact with, empathy for, and the foundation on which it all rested. and, rather late in the run, she came and subbed Lorraine’s repertoire. She was a great Lieder and awareness of her performing partners. Orchestras in the beautiful viola duet that comes near the end Chanson singer. One of my treasured memories is Now that Craig and Lorraine are both gone it always loved playing with Lorraine. She listened to of the opera. Lorraine was rather new in town and a performance that we gave of the Schumann would probably be said that we can better them, they listened back. And no conductor ever making her living as a free-lance Mignon Lieder during the first appreciate their exceptional qualities. But this invited singers and players more irresistibly to violist. She was a marvelous player Emmanuel Music Schumann cycle. would be wrong: those who experienced, then, listen than Craig Smith, who made true and soon became a regular in our She was also a passionate and skilled their deep, unimpeded connection to music never contributors of every member of his ensembles. Sunday morning Bach Cantata series. advocate of new music. Her doubted that we were blessed by their presence. Within several months Lorraine came performances of her husband’s work Craig and Lorraine worked together all over the – John Harbison to me and asked if she could sing an – Peter Lieberson’s Rilke and Neruda world, but their performances at Emmanuel, of Acting Artistic Director, Emmanuel Music audition. I had known that she was songs – are definitive. She also sang which these in-concert recordings represent only a doing a degree in the opera program significant premieres of two works of at the Boston Conservatory but had John Harbison, the orchestration of JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH never heard her sing. At that time she two volumes of his Montale songs as was a soprano with a beautiful well as the role of Myrtle in The Bach’s Cantata BWV 30 has an unusual history. It grandeur in its opening chorale Allein zu dir, Herr piercingly pure voice. The musical Great Gatsby at the Metropolitan began life as a secular cantata in honor of a Leipzig Jesu Christ serves to make the astounding alto aria qualities that we all treasured in her Opera. John also worked with her extensively at town official. It would seem that Bach had in mind that follows it Wie fürchtsam wankten meine Schritte viola playing were all there in her singing. Emmanuel Music. An example of their from its conception that it would be converted into a even more personal and striking. Bach writes so Lorraine’s great break-out performance came with collaboration appears on this recording. cantata. Few of Bach's parody works fit as naturally many different kinds of music that we can’t say of and well in both of their sets of words. The high him as we are accustomed to say of others that “this her marvelous and almost unbearably intense One of Lorraine’s last series of performances was a point of the cantata is the haunting and inward aria sounds like Brahms” or “this sounds like Schumann.” portrayal of Sesto in our production of Handel’s small tour of two Bach Cantatas staged by Peter for alto with flute and strings – Kommt ihr In fact, our aria here truly sounds like “the blues.” The Guilio Cesare in Egitto at the Pepsico Festival in Sellars. The Emmanuel Orchestra was full of many angefochtnen Sünder. The key word here is “grace.” melody, with its depressed flatted sixth and lazy Purchase, New York. The director, Peter Sellars, had of Lorraine’s old friends from her free-lancing days. Indeed one can hardly think of another Bach aria that rhythmic loping quality, is an uncanny prediction of immediately recognized Lorraine’s remarkable We all knew that Lorraine was sick, and the so profoundly illustrates a state of grace. The gentle that style. The pizzicato lower strings and the muted stage persona and had given her part, (heretofore experience was overwhelming in its poignance and dance rhythms are celestial and heavenly in their first violins only strengthen the resemblance. The aria considered a minor role), a central placement in profundity. the drama. Several years later she performed inexorable progress. is a very long full da capo, something needed to – Craig Smith, July 2007 Donna Elvira in the same festival. What a In Cantata BWV 33 the chorus’s rather chilly balance the breadth of the opening chorus. Page 4 Page 5 PMS PMS 000 000 0 GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL After a brief overture, the second act opens with After two acts of great length the third act is Iole singing a beautiful pastoral aria, tinged with remarkably concentrated. Lichas describes how Hercules – The Dejanira arias and duet sadness. Dejanira overhears it and is overwhelmed Hercules has put on the robe given him by with jealousy. She sings an aria of sadness When Dejanira, only to discover the deadly revenge of the Of all of the great opera composers, Handel has hair-raising chromaticism inserts itself into the beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears shot through with centaur – it is burning his skin off. Hercules enters the most variety in his outlook upon the drama. texture, the first indication of the madness that will bitterness because of how attractive Iole’s grief in the last throes of pain. He rails at Dejanira for her After his brilliant conversion of some of the great be the generating force behind the whole drama. seems. Iole rather densely reacts with a preachy duplicity, not knowing that she sent the garment Old Testament stories into riveting and human Dejanira’s actual vocal line never participates fully line about the dangers of jealousy. Lichas enters innocently, hoping for reconciliation. In his last theater, the choice of a Sophocles play is surprising. in the harrowing harmony. The effect is startlingly and is amazed that Dejanira declares that Hercules moments Hercules begs his son to build a funeral For all of the thunderous seriousness of works like modern, as if even she does not know the depths has been unfaithful. He describes in the most pyre on Mt. Oeta. Hyllus sings an aria of Saul and Samson, nothing in those music dramas of despair in her soul. Dejanira’s son, Hyllus, enters. glowing terms how the hero had been true to determination to honor his father. Meanwhile, prepares us for the overwhelming Sophoclean He tells of the disastrous results when he Dejanira. She remains unconvinced. Dejanira realizes her terrible mistake and, in a mad gloom of Hercules. It is the many shades of the consulted the Oracle and describes the death of Meanwhile, Hyllus has fallen in love with Iole.