I’m typing this on my nephew’s new laptop.
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Hansel & Gretel Premieres: Day 24 Opera Advent
ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 24
The opera “Hansel and Gretel” was given its first performance on this date in 1893, with Richard Strauss conducting at the Hoftheater in Weimar. Engelbert Humperdinck’s magnum opus – which features a sandman, a dew fairy, a witch, and the imminent threat of cannibalism – has been associated with the Christmas season ever since.
The Brothers Grimm inspiration is the best known of a wave of Märchenopern (fairy tale operas) that swept Germany in the 19th century. Less fortunate was Hans Pfitzner’s “Das Christ-Elflein” (“The Christmas Elf”), with its charming mix of Christian and pagan symbols, including the title character, an old tree spirit, Saint Nicholas’ sidekick, Knecht Ruprecht, and even the Christ Child!
Here’s Hans Pfitzner conducting a recording of the overture, in 1927:
And Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with Irmgard Seefried in an excerpt from “Hansel and Gretel,” with Josef Krips conducting, in 1947:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQah7onXhc4
PHOTO: You know what they say, if you can’t stand the heat…
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Advent Calendar Day 25 Happy Christmas To All
ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 25
I’d like to write more, but I’m afraid I’ve been sucked into the maelstrom.
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
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Advent Calendar Day 23 Christmas Chaos & Swedish Music
ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 23
All right, I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this Advent calendar!
All I want to do is write about La Befana, the Christmas witch, and those maddening Icelandic Yule Lads, but now I’ve basically got a little over 24 hours to write my scripts, do my production work and complete my Christmas shopping, which I haven’t even begun (the joy of getting paid by invoice).
I’m actually writing this while I’m on hold, trying to order a gift after somebody’s website failed to process my order. That’s what I get for trying to buy directly from the company, as opposed to Amazon. Now I’m tied in, since I’m not sure if my card went through. No good deed goes unpunished, even at Christmastime.
At least my cat is entertained by “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” as it blares tinnily over my speaker phone. I think I need to cool down with a good, Swedish snowball fight.
Here’s Wilhelm Stenhammar’s “Midvinter”:
And juicy Jussi Bjöerling singing “O Holy Night”:
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English Nativity Settings: Parry & Vaughan Williams
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate Christmas with an hour of English Nativity settings.
Hubert Parry was part of the English Musical Renaissance – not the actual Renaissance, but rather that flowering of English music which took place at the close of the 19th century, after a nearly 200 year dearth of world class composers following the death of Henry Purcell in 1695.
A professor at the Royal College of Music in London, Parry eventually became the school’s head. He influenced an entire generation of much better known composers, people like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Frank Bridge.
We’ll be listening to Parry’s “Ode on the Nativity,” for soprano, chorus and orchestra, on a text by William Dunbar. The work was given its premiere in 1912 at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival, on the same day as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”
Vaughan Williams wrote so much Christmas music. It’s remarkable that such a spiritual composer, who seemed particularly attracted to religious texts and Biblical subjects, was a self-proclaimed agnostic. At least by the end of his life he had softened his stance from atheism! He was particularly passionate about Christmas carols.
We’ll be listening to the very last music he ever composed, “The First Nowell,” a nativity play arranged and adapted from medieval pageants by Simona Pakenham.
Vaughan Williams worked diligently on the piece during his final month, but died before the work’s completion. Nonetheless, he had finished orchestrating two thirds of it and had mapped out the rest rather thoroughly. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.
By the way, Douglas just turned 107 on December 12! He is still listed on the board of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society as its vice-president. Next to Douglas, Vaughan Williams was a mere lad while he was at work on the piece, at the age of 85.
I hope you’ll join me for “A Play in a Manger,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Christmas Eve at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
Merry Christmas!
PHOTOS: Vaughan Williams with fur on his clothes; Parry with fur on his face
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