By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Today at 2pm, Ohio Light Opera gives its next-to-last performance of Frank Loesser’s How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster.
And tonight at 7:30 at Transformer Station in Hingetown, the Cleveland Museum of Arts’ City Stages presents the Toronto-based band Battle of Santiago (pictured), which “combines classic Afro-Cuban rhythms and vocals with a Canadian art-rock spirit and sensibility.”
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Oberlin Conservatory has added a free, all-J.S. Bach piano recital by Ewa Poblocka to its Piano Festival on Saturday, July 29 at 8 in Warner Concert Hall. Details here.
ALMANAC FOR JULY 2
By Stephanie Manning
On this day in 1882, Richard Wagner‘s opera Parsifal premiered in Bayreuth, Germany. The German composer’s last completed opera, Parsifal (or Parzifal, as it was originally spelled) is based on an epic poem from the 13th century that tells the story of the knight Parzifal and his search for the Holy Grail.
This was the first work Wagner composed specifically for the acoustic of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which had opened seven years earlier.
One of the many orchestral conductors to record the music from Parsifal was Serge Koussevitzky (pictured), who was born on this date in 1874. Listen to his Boston Symphony Orchestra recording of the “Prelude” from Act I and “Good Friday Spell” from Act III here.
These recordings were made during the Russian-American conductor’s final years with the Orchestra, which he led from 1924 to 1949. His tenure was an exciting time of change, as the conductor commissioned works from major composers such as Stravinsky (Symphony of Psalms), Hindemith, Barber, and Copland.
Before his conducting career, however, Koussevitzky was a double-bassist who performed as principal bass at the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. He also gave solo recitals around Europe, and his repertoire included his own double bass concerto, composed in 1902. Listen to a performance by Luis Cabrera Martin and the Netherlands Philharmonic here.
