by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:
We have operas at CIM and Oberlin and an Apollo’s Fire world premiere to recommend to you this weekend. All of them open on Friday and some get repeated.
Apollo’s Fire presents Mozart’s Requiem and Eric Gould’s 1791: Requiem for the Ancestors (World Premiere), directed by Jeannette Sorrell, with Sonya Headlam, sopranos, Guadalupe Paz, mezzo-soprano, Jacob Perry, tenor, Kevin Deas, bass-baritone, Apollo’s Musettes treble youth choir, and Apollo’s Singers professional chamber chorus. 7:30 pm at at St. Bernard Catholic Church, 44 University Ave., Akron, repeated on Saturday at 7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.
CIM Opera Theater presents Puccini’s one-acts Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. Dean Southern, director, and Harry Davidson, conductor. 7:30 in Kulas Hall, 11021 East Blvd., Cleveland. Repeated on Sunday at 3.
Oberlin Opera Theater presents L’amant anonyme by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George. Fenlon Lamb, director, and Kelly Kuo, conductor. Premiered in 1780, this two-act opéra comique is the only Bologne opera to survive to the present day. 8 pm in Hall Auditorium, 67 N. Main St., Oberlin. Tickets available online. Repeated Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Houston Grand Opera announced on Thursday that James Gaffigan will serve as the fifth music director in its 70-year history. He replaces Patrick Summers, who announced last year that he would step down as artistic and music director at the end of the 2025-26 season. Although HGO doesn’t mention it in its press notice, Gaffigan has served as assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst.
WEEKEND ALMANAC
Three entrances and one exit to remember today.
On this date in 1877, British composer and promoter Henry Balfour Gardiner was born in London. His name pops up these days in Anglican music lists as the composer of the Evening Hymn (Te lucis ante terminum), a dramatic anthem often sung at Choral Evensong services. Listen here to a follow-the-score performance by The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers.
But Gardiner should also be remembered as an advocate for the works of such contemporary British musicians as Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, and Roger Quilter, whose music was featured in concerts Gardiner underwrote at London’s Queen’s Hall in 1912-1913. Self-critical, he stopped composing in 1925 and devoted himself to an early ecological project, planting trees on his pig farm in Dorset.
On this date in 1926, the celebrated Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland was born in Sydney. Have a look at The Best of Joan Sutherland Live from the Sydney Opera House, a film produced by her husband-conductor Richard Bonynge.
And on this date in 1949, American composer Steven Stucky entered the scene in Hutchinson, Kansas. During his relatively short career (he died of a brain tumor in Ithaca, New York in 2016), Stucky was affiliated with a number of Orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic (resident composer from 1988–2009), the New York Philharmonic (host of its Hear & Now series from 2005–2009, and the Pittsburgh Symphony (Composer of the Year, 2011–2012).
One of Stucky’s most intriguing projects was The Classical Style, the comic opera on which he collaborated with the pianist Jeremy Denk, but died before its completion (Denk carried the piece forward). Based on Charles Rosen’s book The Classical Style, the work received its first full staging at Aspen in 2015, when Opera News wrote
At times the performance veered close to the sophomoric humor of an end-of-year fraternity or sorority review, but it never arrived there. The opera is hugely entertaining, not least because Steven Stucky is a parodist of genius whose knowledge of the language of classical music over the past 250 years is astoundingly detailed and seemingly infinite. The majority of the score is based on the music of the Big Three, and Stucky was clearly most at ease and enjoying himself as he parodied Mozart.
Today’s date in 1983 saw the departure of French composer Germaine Tailleferre in Paris at the age of 91, the only female member of the Group des Six, which included Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc.
Watch a performance of Tailleferre’s Petite suite pour orchestra by l’Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France led by Mikko Franck.
