by Jarrett Hoffman
HAPPENING TONIGHT:
At 7:30 pm, Debra Nagy teams up with Scott Metcalfe of Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron for the latest episode of Les Délices’ SalonEra series: “Machaut Man.” (Can’t beat that title.)
The episode celebrates the forthcoming release of the ensembles’ collaborative album Le Remede de Fortune, centered around that work by Machaut — a long-form narrative poem with musical interpolations that tells the story of a young lover’s attempts to live well despite the capriciousness of Fortune.
In addition to showcasing footage from live performances and from the ensembles’ archives, tonight Nagy and Metcalfe will explore the extravagantly detailed, evocative illuminations found in MS C, one of the most richly-decorated of Machaut’s surviving manuscripts.
See the full program and register here. It’s available for a short time on-demand after the premiere.
R.I.P. SONDHEIM:
The most important piece of news in music since our last Diary entry is the passing of Stephen Sondheim, titan of American musical theater, on November 26 at the age of 91. The lyricist for West Side Story early on in his career, he went on to leave his strongest legacy as both the composer and lyricist for such musicals as Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods.
Probably his most famous song is “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, sung here by Judi Dench, who received the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in a revival of the show in 1995 in London.
But as Tim Page writes in an obituary in The Washington Post, “Mr. Sondheim was less interested in creating stand-alone popular ‘hits’ than in fashioning unified works that maintained a firm, near-operatic structural integrity throughout.” To experience the song in context, as Sondheim himself felt it was most powerful, watch the full musical here in a live broadcast from New York City Opera in November of 1990.
To some critics, including Page, Sondheim’s greatest masterpiece is Sweeney Todd, a work that is interesting for many reasons aside from its unusual and dark subject matter. Those include its categorization in genre: some consider it an opera, or at least a crossover. “It has demands for specific singers that are more operatic, yet need the acting skills necessary in traditional musicals,” Michigan Opera Theater assistant music director and chorus master Suzanne Acton said in an article in Detroit Free Press.
This 2014 performance of the Johanna Quartet from Sweeney Todd provides a good example: it’s fascinating to hear bass-baritone and frequent operatic star Bryn Terfel as the title character, singing side by side with a Broadway headliner in Jay Armstrong Johnson.
Finally, as evidence of just how strongly Sondheim’s passing has been felt in the musical community, watch here as a large group of Broadway artists — including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban, and Sara Bareilles — gather in Times Square this past Sunday, November 28, to sing “Sunday” from Sunday In The Park With George.