by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra presents the second of three performances of Leoš Janáček’s 1904 opera Jenůfa. Franz Welser-Möst, conducts a cast featuring Latonia Moore, soprano (Jenůfa), Samuel Levine, tenor (Laca), Miles Mykkanen, tenor (Števa), Nina Stemme, soprano (Kostelnička) and The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Read our review of the opening performance here.
And at the same hour at Neighborhood Connections, Renovare Music presents A Hive’s Song: The Frequency of Sisterhood, an evening of instrumental music and original documentary songs written in collaboration with My Sistas Keeper, a collective of black, female, urban beekeepers in Greater Cleveland.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1874, Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem was first performed at the church of San Marco in Milan, ending a long saga for the composer, who had originally proposed a collaborative work by several Italian composers to honor Gioachino Rossini after his death in 1868. Verdi himself contributed the final movement, “Libera me,” but for various reasons, the project fell through a week before its premiere in November of 1869.
Verdi found an opportunity to recycle that “Libera me” when Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873 and he embarked on writing a new Requiem all his own in honor of the famous Italian author and humanist.
Click here to watch a performance of the Requiem by CityMusic Cleveland at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on May 2, 2019 led by James Gaffigan. The special Yom ha-Sho’ah performance commemorated the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt, who performed the Requiem 16 times in 1944, before being sent to their death at Auschwitz. Soloists are Chabrelle Williams, soprano, Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano, Joshua Blue, tenor & Raymond Aceto, bass. The chorus was prepared by Ben Malkevitch.
(PS: the Requiem for Rossini was finally performed in 1988 in Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Listen here.)
And as noted above, on May 22, 1813, Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig. Having just mentioned Theresienstadt, it’s now impossible to talk about the composer of the Ring operas without referencing his popularity with the perpetrators of the Third Reich.
British actor and writer Stephen Fry addresses Wagner’s complicated legacy and his own fascination with the composer’s music in his hour-and-a-half long Wagner and Me, available for free in an occasionally spotty posting on YouTube, and for a fee on various streaming services.
And former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Brett Mitchell joins Bill O’Connell in WCLV’s 35-minute video discussion of the Ring. Watch Gods and Monsters: The Musical Journey of Wagner’s Ring Cycle here.
