Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Benita Valente Soprano Passes Away at 91

I am so very sorry to learn of the death of soprano Benita Valente. Valente, who only just turned 91 on October 19, died at her home in Philadelphia yesterday.

Despite her unfailingly pure sound, no one could ever accuse her of lacking versatility. She was praised for her Mozart heroines. Over the course of her career, she sang Pamina 200 times, including at the Metropolitan Opera, belatedly (she’d already sung the role for some 20 years), beginning in 1973. She also impressed with her Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” her Violetta in Verdi’s “La traviata,” and her Mimi in Puccini’s “La bohème.”

But her voice was also ideally suited to Bach cantatas and lieder recitals encompassing a broad swath of the repertoire, including songs of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf.

She received a Grammy Award for her recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2 and was nominated for her recording of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ,” both with the Juilliard String Quartet.

Composers who wrote music specifically for her include William Bolcom, Alberto Ginastera, John Harbison, Libby Larsen, and Richard Wernick.

I was lucky to have heard her sing Handel’s Ginevra opposite Tatiana Troyanos’ Ariodante with the Opera Company of Philadelphia in 1989. It seemed the two singers were pretty much joined at the hip during that period.

But of course, it is in the classic recording of Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the Rock,” with clarinetist Harold Wright and pianist Rudolf Serkin, that she had really touched my heart.

She was married to Anthony Checchia, founding artistic director of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and administrator for the Marlboro Music Festival, who died last year at the age of 94.

Valente was so much a musical presence – and a source of Philadelphia pride for so long – that her passing is inconceivable.

R.I.P.

Schubert, “The Shepherd on the Rock”

Brahms, “Liebeslieder Waltzes,” with alto Marlena Kleinman, tenor (later beloved radio host) Wayne Conner, bass (also Valente’s teacher) Martial Sigher, and pianists Serkin and Leon Fleisher

Handel, “Lascia ch’io pianga” from “Rinaldo”

Handel, “Radamisto”

PHOTO: Valente (front left) with Tatiana Troyanos in “Ariodante” at Santa Fe Opera in 1987

October 25, 2025
French Halloween Music the Lost Chord

On the whole the French don’t really celebrate Halloween (too American), but if you find one who does, don’t say “trick or treat.” Rather, demand “Des bonbons ou un sort!” – candy or a spell.

While France might not be down with the whole Halloween thing, many of the country’s great artists, writers, and composers could totally conjure a Halloween vibe. Think Odilon Redon’s “The Smiling Spider,” Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du mal,” or Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse macabre.”

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have three pieces of French music totally suitable for the season.

Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” (“Gaspard of the Night”) – musical responses to the weird and sinister poetry of Aloysius Bertrand – is a suite of creepy impressions of (1) a flirtatious water spirit, (2) a hanged man at sunset against the backdrop of a tolling bell, and (3) a vampiric dwarf named Scarbo. Gina Bachauer will be the pianist, and Sir John Gielgud will preface each of the movements with recitations of the Bertrand poems.

Claude Debussy was enthralled by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, which he knew through Baudelaire’s translations. At the time of his death, he left incomplete sketches for two operas after Poe stories – “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Devil in the Belfry.” We’ll hear fragments of the former, conducted by Georges Prêtre.

Finally, we’ll listen to the third of the “Etudes in Minor Keys,” subtitled “Scherzo Diabolico,” by Charles-Valentin Alkan. Alkan, a sometimes neighbor of Chopin and Georges Sand, shared a home with his illegitimate son, two apes, and a hundred cockatoos. Franz Liszt is alleged to have commented, “Alkan had the finest technique I had ever known, but preferred the life of a recluse.”

Best known is the story surrounding the circumstances of his death: while reaching for a copy of the Talmud, situated on a high shelf of a heavy bookcase, the case let go and crushed Alkan beneath it. It’s been suggested that the composer actually collapsed while in the kitchen – but when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. We’ll hear his etude in a recording by the late Michael Ponti.

I hope you’ll join me for “Jacques o’ Lanterns” – lurid music by French composers for Halloween on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 25, 2025
Halloween Music on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be cutting holes in Mom’s best sheets for a light music trick-or-treat. Join me for 13 ghostly premonitions of a holiday I am happy to say I never outgrew.

We’ll enjoy Halloween songs, selections from Halloween film scores, Halloween piano miniatures, and Halloween light music classics about a haunted ballroom, an ostracized imp, and a devil’s ride, all lovingly curated by you-know-who. Nothing too terribly terrible. It’s all in good fun. There will be no cowering before this disarming parade of spirits, reanimated corpses, witches, bogeymen, demons, and necromancers!

I’ve carefully examined all the candy for pins and razor blades, so you mustn’t hesitate to indulge. It will be Smarties® and peanut butter cups for breakfast, when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Aaah-OOOOOO!

October 25, 2025
Spooky Comedy Movie Soundtracks Halloween Mix

Spooky comedies. A seeming oxymoron. Perhaps in an attempt to subvert our fears, or to generate laughter from tension, filmmakers have frequently juxtaposed humor with the supernatural – or at any rate death.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll conjure some Hallowe’en spirit with music from four macabre comedies.

Frank Capra’s screen adaptation of “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944) was actually shot in 1941, but it could not be released until after the hit stage play, by Joseph Kesselring, had concluded its Broadway run.

The film starred Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Jack Carson, and Capra favorites James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton.

Two seemingly innocuous spinster aunts poison lonely old men and have them buried in their basement, by a family member who believes that he’s Teddy Roosevelt. (He thinks that he’s digging the Panama Canal.) Massey and Lorre play a murderer on the lam and his plastic surgeon, respectively, who hole up in the house, unaware that Massey’s body count pales next to that of his unwitting hosts.

The score, by Max Steiner, is as manic as Grant’s performance – perhaps a mite overdone, with its breakneck allusions to familiar melodies – but it bears the same distinctive gloss as other Steiner classics like “Gone With the Wind” and “Casablanca.”

Composer Bernard Herrmann will always be most closely associated with the films of Alfred Hitchcock. In particular, his music for the shower scene in “Psycho” has entered the popular consciousness as few other film scores have. Hitchcock and Herrmann collaborated on nine films in all. The first of these was a black comedy called “The Trouble with Harry” (1955), a droll farce about a corpse that materializes in a New England community and can’t seem to stay buried.

Don Knotts and a haunted house – that’s the high concept behind “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” (1966). How could it possibly miss? Knotts’ elastic-faced terror finds a goofy foil in Vic Mizzy’s score. Mizzy also wrote music for “The Addams Family.”

Finally, in a kind of twist on “Topper,” Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play a recently-deceased couple who try to scare off the inhabitants of their former home, in “Beetlejuice” (1988). In desperation, they enlist the services of a manic “bio-exorcist” (a loosy-goosy Michael Keaton) and things get seriously antic.

The music is by Danny Elfman, as always a fan of Nino Rota, although he also pays homage to the Stravinsky of “The Soldier’s Tale” and frequently alludes to Raymond Scott. There’s even a touch of Bernard Herrmann in one of the tracks, as Elfman evokes the skeleton fight from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.”

I hope you’ll join me for a mishmash of horror and humor this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 24, 2025
Halloween Radio Special on KWAX

Since Halloween falls on a Friday this year – one week from today – I hope you’ll indulge me this weekend as all three of my radio shows will tie in to my favorite holiday.

First, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies (Friday at 8:00 p.m. EDT/5:00 p.m. PDT), we’ll enjoy scores from spooky or macabre comedies, including “Arsenic and Old Lace” (Max Steiner), “The Trouble with Harry” (Bernard Herrmann), “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” (Vic Mizzy), and “Beetlejuice” (Danny Elfman).

Then, tomorrow on “Sweetness and Light” (Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT), it will be a light music Halloween, with spooktacular selections associated with haunted ballrooms, ostracized imps, reanimated skeletons, nimble witches, adept sorcerers, ghost removal specialists, consumerist zombies, dancing lunatics, boogey men, headless horsemen, boy wizards, and galloping devils.

Finally, on “The Lost Chord” (Saturday at 7:00 p.m. EDT/4:00 p.m. PDT), écoutez to French music for the season, including Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” after grotesque poetry of Aloysius Bertrand (with pianist Gina Bachauer and narrator Sir John Gielgud), a fragment of an unfinished opera inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Claude Debussy, and an etude subtitled “Scherzo diabolico” by the misanthropic and reclusive Charles-Valentin Alkan.

But wait! There’s more!

Since “Picture Perfect” falls on a Friday, I’ll have one more chance next week, on Halloween proper, when I’ll offer a playlist of evocative and ear-catching vintage horror and science fiction scores from the 1950s, with enough narration and gaudy sound effects to provide the perfect soundtrack for your Trick-or-Treat.

All air times for the above shows are reiterated below. Stream them wherever you are from KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

October 24, 2025

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS