by Stephanie Manning
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 noon, Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concerts presents Sororii, a female-led band featuring Afro-Colombian cellist Carolina Borja and bassoonist Arleigh Savage. Formed during the pandemic, the duo use the project to explore sisterhood and feminine voices across cultures.
For details on more upcoming concerts, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The opening two weeks of The Cleveland Orchestra’s season will no longer include Franz Welser-Möst.
Doctors advised the music director to rest following the group’s European tour. “His ongoing cancer treatment is going well,” the Orchestra said in a press release, “but the side effects remain challenging.”
Osmo Vänskä (pictured, left) will now lead the opening week performances with violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, making no music changes. In the second week, Elim Chan (pictured, right) will take to the podium, swapping out Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka for Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Pianist Yefim Bronfman will perform Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto as scheduled.
The Orchestra’s annual gala concert on September 21 will be led by Associate Conductor Daniel Reith.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Francesca Caccini — the Italian composer, singer, lutenist, and poet whose opera La liberazione di Ruggiero is believed to be the first entry in that genre by a woman, and possibly the first Italian opera to be performed outside of Italy — was born on September 18, 1587 in Florence.
In March 2021, during the “Women in Music” episode of Les Délices’ SalonEra series, soprano Michelle Kennedy sang the role of the Siren in “Chi nel fior di giovinezza,” a scene from that Caccini opera. I spoke to Kennedy before the episode aired, and among our topics of discussion was the composer’s distinctive ornamentation.
“It’s kind of a signature of hers — she was a master of ornamentation as a performer, and also compositionally,” Kennedy said. Though the episode is no longer freely accessible, it’s worth noting that SalonEra subscribers get on-demand access to the first three seasons.
Caccini’s signature ornamentation is most evident in her famous collection of solo songs and duets Il primo libro delle musiche. Soprano Henriette Feith and theorbist David Van Ooijen choose a selection of songs from that work in their album La Cecchina (the composer’s nickname) — listen in this playlist on YouTube.
