By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
As its season winds down, Ohio Light Opera presents two final performances today in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster, with more to come through Sunday: at 2pm, Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and at 7:30, Emmerich Kálmán’s Arizona Lady. We’ve reviewed the productions here and here, and Daniel Hathaway has interviewed Kálmán’s daughter Yvonne, who was in town to see her father’s western-themed operetta.
And at 7:30 pm, Kent Blossom Music Festival presents a concert in its Young Artist Series in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus. Check out the KBFM full schedule here.
ALMANAC FOR JULY 27
On this date in 1741, Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi died in Vienna. He made his reputation in Venice, especially as music director for 30 years of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for young women. He continued his career in Mantua, eventually migrating to Vienna in hopes of advancing his fortunes as an opera composer.
Of course, Vivaldi’s best known for his hundreds of orchestral concertos, including The Four Seasons, which have provided a central stream of music for Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire. Click here to watch a performance of his Concerto for Two Cellos (René Schiffer and Mimé Brinkmann), and here to witness Jeannette Sorrell’s infectious arrangement of his La Folia, both from concerts at Tanglewood.
And on July 27, 1924, Italian-German composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni died in Berlin. Known for his Romantic piano elaborations of Bach chorales, Busoni crowned his keyboard works with his immense Piano Concerto. Click here to watch an historic video of the work with pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Lahti (Finland) Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä conducting, recorded in Sibelius Hall, Lahti on March, 31, 2001. And here for a more recent, 2019 live performance by Kirill Gerstein with the Boston Symphony and the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Sakari Oramo conducting.
