31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN (DAY 10)
For Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday, a totally Goth witches’ chorus from “Macbeth”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b4tKhV5mcg
Act III Witches’ Dance from Taiwan
IMAGE: “The Three Witches from Macbeth” (1827) by Alexandre-Marie Colin
Composer Peter Westergaard has died. Westergaard was chair of the Princeton University Music Department – twice – from 1974-1978 and from 1983-1986. He also taught at Columbia University and Amherst. Among his teachers were Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, Wolfgang Fortner, Darius Milhaud, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. Westergaard retired from Princeton in 2001. As a composer, he wrote mainly chamber music and opera, including adaptations of the “The Tempest,” “Moby Dick,” and “Alice in Wonderland.” Westergaard was 88 years-old.
You’ll find out more about Westergaard here:
http://uihistories.library.illinois.edu/TAMHistory/Talbot/rh_talbot5.html
His chamber opera, after Edward Lear, “Mr. & Mrs. Discobbolos:”
The text of Lear’s poem:
http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/discobbolos.html
http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/discobbolos2.html
PHOTOS: (top) Westergaard at the dress rehearsal for the premiere of “Alice in Wonderland” at Princeton in 2008; (bottom, left to right) cover design for the score and libretto of “The Tempest” by Lambertville artist Alison Carver; composer and friend enjoying some together time at the keyboard; Westergaard and his wife, Barbara, in 1994
A composer who happens to share a name with at least one president writes an opera about another. John Adams’ “Nixon in China” is the centerpiece of this year’s The Princeton Festival. Check out my unimpeachable preview in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today.
https://princetoninfo.com/modern-opera-brings-nixon-era-to-princeton-festival/
Boheme Opera NJ will celebrate its 30th anniversary with two performances of Verdi’s “Aida” at The College of New Jersey, this Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.
Joseph and Sandra Pucciatti staged their first production – a skeletal performance of “I Pagliacci” – in a Trenton parking lot, back in 1981. From this unlikely acorn sprang central New Jersey’s most enduring opera company, which gave its first main stage performance in 1989.
Opera is a colorful business. Read all about the Pucciattis’ incredible journey, from “Hey! Let’s put on a show!” to the Radamès’ triumphal march, in my article in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, out today.
https://princetoninfo.com/boheme-opera-celebrates-30-with-triumphal-march/
PHOTO: Marsha Thompson will head the cast in this weekend’s “Aida”
Here’s Gianni Schicchi as you’ve never seen him before.
(Under)worlds away from Giacomo Puccini’s quick-witted, charming scapegrace, the Schicchi of Dante’s “Inferno” is condemned to hell for the very reason we cheer him in the opera – for impersonating Buoso Donati, in whose guise he alters Donati’s will, much to his own advantage.
Of course, Dante’s wife happened to be a descendant of Donati, so you might say he had something of an axe to grind. Also, the celebrated poet being of noble ancestry, he would have had been predisposed to finding the peasant Schicchi’s behavior reprehensible.
What would Lauretta think of her “babbino caro” now?
Schicchi exhibiting some downright vampiric tendencies in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Dante and Virgil,” 1850
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