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Les Délices: The White Cat, a new Baroque opera at the Breen (Apr. 2)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Ailurophiles rejoice! There’s a new opera in town, created as many French Baroque titles were back in the day, out of bits and pieces of existing material, and the principal character is a large feline. (It’s actually a princess seeking to be rehumanized through the traditional heroic means of fulfilling a series of impossible challenges or quests.)

The creative team behind The White Cat begins with Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy, who has had Larry Rosenwald adapt Marie-Catherine D’Aulnoy’s story La Chatte Blanche into a five-act (or five-quest) libretto that recasts the manipulative Puss in Boots, who gets ahead almost entirely through trickery, into a kinder, gentler feline. Each quest is linked with a French version of one of Aesop’s Fables coupled with a divertissement, and joined together by well-known tunes like Couperin’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses. [Read more…]

Les Délices goes live
with The White Cat

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by Mike Telin

For centuries the fairy tale of Puss in Boots, the wily cat who stops at nothing to gain power and wealth for his penniless master, has been a source of inspiration for composers and choreographers.

“For some time I’ve been thinking about how to bring attention to the women authors of fairy tales from late 17th-century France,” Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation. “I started reading them and thinking about which stories would be appealing to a 21st-century reader, and Catherine D’Aulnoy’s The White Cat really drew my attention. It’s an interesting rewrite of Puss-in-boots from the point of view of her humility, kindness, and generosity which is in contrast to the manipulative Puss-in-boots who gets ahead almost entirely through trickery.”

On Friday, April 1st at 7:30 pm at the Akron Public Library, Les Délices will present their new 65-minute opera, The White Cat. [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: Four Seasons rediscovered at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Oct. 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

At the top of their program at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday afternoon, October 24, Apollo’s Fire founder and artistic director Jeannette Sorrell told the full house that the Baroque orchestra was opening its 30th season with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons rediscovered, returning to a piece that the ensemble has featured every year since 1991.

It might seem that there’s not a lot left to discover after three decades of experience with the Red Priest’s charming and evocative score, but this performance boasted a secret weapon: the young Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana, now the Orchestra’s artist-in-residence, whose affecting personality and easy virtuosity raised the solo part a quantum leap above the merely extraordinary. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices has once again joined forces with Boston’s Blue Heron, this time to produce the impressive video “Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain,” which debuted on Vimeo on April 8, and remains available on-demand until April 19.

LD’s artistic director Debra Nagy introduces the hour-long program with a discourse on the importance of the garden and its centerpiece, the fountain, for artists and musicians of the 14th century. Later in the program, Blue Heron artistic director Scott Metcalfe expands on the subject by exploring the Trinitarian metaphor behind that bubbling source of water in the Medieval mind. [Read more…]

Les Délices mesmerizes with Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

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by Mike Telin

Now that the cold and dreary winter is behind us, our thoughts turn to spring. And with trees beginning to blossom and flowers blooming we can begin to think about cultivating the garden. On April 8 at 7:30 pm, Les Délices will celebrate the Medieval garden and it’s centerpiece — the fountain — with the debut of Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain. The program is presented in collaboration with Boston’s Blue Heron and features video art design by Camilla Tassi. Click here for ticket information.

While devotees of Les Délices will recognize the name Guillaume de Machaut, why has the ensemble returned to his music so frequently? “The practical reason is that there is so much of it,” artistic director Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation.

“He created six copies of his own complete works that are full of compelling story-telling, which is something I’m always interested in when it comes to programming. Once you’ve invested a certain amount of time in learning the language — not just the 14th century French but the style and rhythmic language — it’s hard not to want to spend more time there.” [Read more…]

Apollo’s Fire: being a fly on the wall at early rehearsals of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo

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by Daniel Hathaway

Coro Wandering onto setAdmirers of Thomas Forrest Kelly’s 2000 book First Nights: Five Musical Premieres probably wish they could have been physically present to witness the very first performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.

Me? I wish I had been able to attend the rehearsals — which often prove as interesting as the performances themselves. Rehearsals are where artistic philosophies get established, deals are made between directors and performers, and kinks get worked out. When the piece in question is a staged work, the rehearsal process becomes more complex: the ideas (and egos) of more than one director need to be melded into a single product, and there’s much more that can go awry.

Apollo’s Fire will produce three semi-staged performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in the next week: two in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm, and one at St. Raphael Church in Bay Village on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]

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