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Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The Higgler now on video

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Higgler, a “tragi-comic chamber opera” with music and libretto by Margi Griebling-Haigh debuted at Disciples Christian Church early in June.

Adapted from a romantic English short story by A. E. Coppard about missed opportunities in life and love, the 90-minute opera was recorded live by Enharmonic Records, and is now available for viewing free of charge on Griebling-Haigh’s YouTube channel.

Directed by Marla Berg and conducted by Steven Smith, the production translates beautifully to a small screen. The sound quality is excellent and reflects a vocally strong cast that includes tenor Brian Skoog as Harvey Witlow, “The Higgler,” soprano Gabrielle Haigh as Mary Sadgrove, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Frey as Mrs. Sadgrove, mezzo soprano Denise Milner Howell as Mrs. Witlow, and soprano Lisl Wangerman as Sophy Dawes.

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Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The Higgler gets a curious, yet charming, world premiere (June 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Higgler is an opera about missed opportunities, mixed signals, and difficult decisions. So what awaits its regretful characters once the story ends? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

The ambiguous ending of Margi Griebling-Haigh’s opera is perhaps its biggest paradox. On one hand, when the lights went up not long after a key plot reveal, it left plenty of unanswered questions. On the other, it was hard not to be charmed by the world premiere production at Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights, which I saw on June 8.

The quandary about the ending originates not from Griebling-Haigh’s libretto, but from the original text — A.E. Coppard’s short story “The Higgler,” which the composer follows almost to the letter. Narrator Joseph Hollings occasionally read out verbatim passages, describing certain scenes that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible with the limited set. But director Marla Berg ensured that all transitions were clear, and the rotating backdrops allowed up to three distinct locations to be represented onstage at one time. [Read more…]

Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The Higgler: a conversation with cast members

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday, June 7 at 7:30 pm at Disciples Christian Church, Margi Griebling-Haigh’s tragi-comic chamber opera The Higgler will receive its world premiere, directed by Marla Berg and conducted by Steven Smith.

The production will be repeated on Sunday, June 8 at 3:30 pm. Tickets are available online.

I spoke with Brian Skoog, Elizabeth Frey, and Gabrielle Haigh on Zoom.

Mike Telin: Brian, you’re Harvey Witlow, aka The Higgler. And unlike the leads in Don Giovanni or Pelléas and Mélisande, you actually have the biggest part.

Brian Skoog: Good point — I pretty much don’t leave the stage. Margi said from the beginning that I was going to be in every scene and that turned out to be true.

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Voices from the Other Side: a celebratory album release concert full of local talent (Feb. 25)

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by Stephanie Manning

An entire album of pieces for eight cellos and one soprano might seem like a daunting prospect. But Voices from the Other Side clocks in at more than an hour’s worth of music — so there’s more out there for this instrument combination than you might think.

Released in September 2024, the album features soprano Gabrielle Haigh and the Erie Coast Cellists in music by Margi Griebling-Haigh, Arvo Pärt, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, all conducted by Steven Smith. The group made the recording at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls — and on February 25, they gathered in that same venue to present the music in concert for the first time.

Presented as part of the Federated Church Performing Arts Series, with support from the Cleveland Cello Society, the album release concert took its audience on a journey of varied, accessible, and enjoyable contemporary music. [Read more…]

“Voices from the Other Side:” a conversation with Margi Griebling-Haigh

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by Mike Telin

When composer Margi Griebling-Haigh was asked to write a companion piece for Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, for cello octet and soprano, little did she know that her 1999 work, Voices From the Other Side, a setting of three poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, would resurface years later as inspiration for a recording project.

The album, “Voices From the Other Side,” was released in September 2024 on Navona Records.

On Tuesday, February 25 at 7:00 pm at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, the album will be presented live when conductor Steven Smith leads soprano Gabrielle Haigh and the Erie Coast Cellists in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres and L’abbé Agathon, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, and Margi Griebling-Haigh’s Cantilena and Voices from the Other Side. Tickets are available online.

During a recent telephone conversation, Griebling-Haigh said that when she composed “Voices,” she had no idea that her daughter would go on to become a singer. “She was a little girl when I wrote that piece. She inherited my love for the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

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Gabrielle Haigh visits Respighi’s circle in debut CD with pianist Randall Fusco

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by Daniel Hathaway

There are myriad paths to follow — both musical and literary — when curating an art song recital. For her impressive debut solo CD, soprano Gabriella Haigh chose to visit repertoire reflecting musical relationships that swirled around the 19th-century Italian composer Ottorino Respighi.

That idea was born when Haigh discovered that Respighi’s wife, Elsa (née Olivieri-Sangiacomo), who outlived him by some 60 years — she died at 102 — was both his pupil and a composer herself.

“This revelation led to the idea of performing a recital featuring art songs composed by Respighi’s most influential teachers, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Giuseppe Martucci, by his students Vittorio Rieti and Elsa Respighi, and of course several of his own,” Haigh wrote in her album notes. [Read more…]

Margi Griebling-Haigh’s The White Trout: a chamber opera in one act on YouTube

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by Daniel Hathaway

Commissioned by Peter Gallagher in 2012, premiered in 2013 at the convention of the International Society of Bassists, and revised in 2019, Margi Griebling-Haigh’s 25-minute chamber opera, The White Trout, was released in mid-November on YouTube.

The piece embellishes an Irish folk tale from County Mayo as told by Samuel Lover and collected by William Butler Yeats. Predictably fantastical, the story centers around a beautiful woman whose fiancé, a king’s son, is murdered and thrown into a lake. The grieving bride eventually disappears (the work of fairies?) about the time villagers notice a strange white trout in the water. [Read more…]

Akron Symphony & Chorus: Mozart’s Requiem (Feb. 22)

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by Peter Feher

The history of classical music sometimes borders on mythology. The music on the Akron Symphony’s Saturday, February 22 program has taken on this fabled, quasi-historical quality — Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, and Beethoven’s over-finished Leonore Overture No. 3. Fortunately, in performance the music more than lived up to the story. [Read more…]

Review: Choir of Clare College, Cambridge in concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church (December 14)

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by Nicholas Jones

Clare-College-ChoirIt is one of the joys of the holiday season that choral music rings all about us. Clevelanders have a banquet of our own choral groups to enjoy, but it is an added pleasure to hear an accomplished choir from England, where the choral tradition is so deeply established.

A goodly crowd turned out at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights on a very snowy Saturday evening to hear the choir of Clare College, one of the 31 colleges of the University of Cambridge (indeed, the second oldest of those colleges, established in the early 14th century). The choir, some 25-strong, warmed the church and the audience with its accomplished and vigorous musicality.

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