Having featured highlights from the composer-supervised recording of Gustave Charpentier’s opera, “Louise,” today on my radio show, “The Lost Chord,” I was moved to search for the Abel Gance-directed film version that came out a few years later, in 1939. Gance is probably best known for his silent masterpiece, “Napoleon” (1927; once running close to 9-and-a-half hours; the latest restoration puts it at 7). And what do you know? I found it on YouTube, clocking in at a comparatively lean 1 hour and 25 minutes.
American soprano Grace Moore, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in “One Night of Love” (1934), sings the lead. (“One Night of Love” was the first recipient of an Academy Award for Best Original Score, even though much of the soundtrack is devoted to opera arias and traditional songs.) Tenor Georges Thill and bass André Pernet recreate their stage roles as Julien and Louise’s father, respectively.
Charpentier was very hands-on throughout the production, as he was with the 1935 recording, making cuts and alterations, coaching Moore, and advising Gance. At the time, the composer would have been about 79 years-old.
Charpentier died in 1956 at the age of 95. Until then, he lived pretty much as he always had, since at least 1885 (the year “Louise” is set) – an eternal bohemian in an artist’s garret in Montmartre.
Last season, when soprano Pretty Yende had to cancel her appearances with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra due to illness, Angel Blue stepped up at the eleventh hour to deliver possibly the finest “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” I have ever heard. With the audience in the palm of her hand, she went on to sustain the spell with a selection of gorgeously-rendered operatic arias, the capstone being an impromptu duet on Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” with a music student she invited to join her onstage. It was a memorable weekend of performances that sent everyone into the winter nights aglow with warm fuzzies.
This week, Princeton will have another chance to experience Blue’s enchantment when she returns for opening night of The Princeton Festival, this Friday at 8 p.m.
On the program will be arias by Puccini, Verdi, and Gershwin, with music director Rossen Milanov conducting the PSO in additional orchestral works by Puccini, Dvořák, Delius, and zarzuela master Ruperto Chapí.
The festival, continuing through June 22, will include concerts that embrace a wide variety of genres. As always, the centerpiece will be opera, with this year three fully-staged performances of Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” (June 14, 16 & 18).
But there will also be a Tina Turner tribute show (including Broadway star and “American Idol” finalist LaKisha Jones, June 8 ), a Latin American family program (with Sonia De Los Santos and her band, June 9), chamber music by Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Reena Esmail (with the Abeo Quartet, June 13), dance with American Repertory Ballet (with choreography by Arthur Mitchell and Meredith Raine and music by Philip Glass, Grieg, Miranda Scripp, and Sibelius, June 15), Black choral music (with Capital Singers of Trenton and friends, directed by Westminster Choir College’s Vinroy D. Brown, Jr., June 19), Baroque favorites, including a selection of “Brandenburg Concertos” (with the ensemble The Sebastians, June 20), genre-bending classical crossover (with the trio Empire Wild, June 21), and cabaret (with Tony Award winning artist, for his tour de force performance in Broadway’s “Tootsie,” Santino Fontana, June 22).
Most of the concerts, including opening night with Angel Blue, will be presented in the performance pavilion on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden at 55 Stockton St. (a.k.a. Route 202). Concerts featuring the Abeo Quartet and The Sebastians will be held across the road at Trinity Church Princeton (technically 33 Mercer St.).
For more information and additional events, including pre-performance talks, the Juneteenth celebration, an art exhibit opening, and Yoga in the Garden, visit the festival website at princetonsymphony.org/festival.
Clockwise from upper left: Angel Blue, Sonia De Los Santos, Santino Fontana, and Empire Wild
Has “The Lord of the Rings” at last found a worthy musical champion? Many composers have perished on the slopes of Mount Doom in their quest to bring Tolkien’s magnum opus to the stage, but at last it appears the Tolkien Estate has given its benediction to Paul Corfield Godfrey to write a “Lord of the Rings” opera. Not just any opera, mind you, but, as one would hope, a multi-evening event, in the manner of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” (which Tolkien disliked, by the way, for what he perceived as Wagner’s cavalier treatment of the legendary and mythological source material). Godfrey’s LOTR will consist of 17 hours of music, to be presented over six nights.
Does he have the chops? He is a lifelong fan, who appears to have been crafting Tolkien settings for decades. He lacks for neither energy nor ambition. Who writes that much music about “The Silmarillion?” At least he seems to be able to do atmosphere and, judging from the samples of his work posted online, it doesn’t sound like the characterless noodling with no big moments that makes so much contemporary opera seem so colorless.
At any rate, with the amount of passion this guy has for the material, it’s got to be more than just a “Rings of Power” cash grab. Right? RIGHT???
Among Godfrey’s teachers were Alan Bush, a reputable English composer, and David Wynne, less well-known, but his Symphony No. 3 was conducted by Bryden Thomson and the audio is posted on YouTube.
I imagine the musical language for a LOTR opera can’t help but be old-fashioned, but if anyone were going to do it, I would hope that would be the case. It needs to be big and tonal, with plenty of heaven-storming and heldentenors.
The recordings will appear – on 15 CDs! – in 2025. The project enlists the talents of Volante Opera Productions, with singers drawn largely from the Welsh National Opera. Godfrey’s LOTR will be followed in 2026 by an opera inspired by “The Hobbit.” Both have been in the making for over 50 years.
From the samples of his work posted online, I think this guy understands “The Lord of the Rings” better than Peter Jackson. Then, the bar has been set very low. May the stars shine upon his face!
The great New Zealand lyric soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is 80 today.
Her talent and charisma carried her from humble origins to the world stage.
Her father was a Māori butcher and her mother the daughter of Irish immigrants. Inconveniently, her father happened to be married to someone else – the daughter of the community minister! Under the circumstance, her mother insisted on giving her up for adoption. Te Kanawa was raised by an indigenous couple and took their surname. Her birthname, from her mother, was Rawstron.
In her teens and early 20s, she started out as a pop singer and an entertainer at clubs. First prize in an opera competition, Mobil Song Quest, in 1965, brought her a grant to study in London. A contemporaneous recording of the “Nuns’ Chorus” from Johann Strauss II’s operetta “Casanova” became New Zealand’s first gold record. Almost as an afterthought, she won the Melbourne Sun Aria Contest in 1966.
That same year, she was accepted without audition into the London Opera Centre. It was remarked that while she lacked technique, she already possessed the ability to captivate an audience. Needless to say, she picked up and polished the technique.
In 1973, she received an OBE for her services to music. She was elevated to a Dame, for her services to opera, in 1982. By then, she was recognized all over the world for having sung Handel’s “Let the Bright Seraphim” at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981.
It seems almost anticlimactic that her recording of “The Marriage of Figaro,” with Sir Georg Solti conducting, would receive a Grammy Award in 1984. In all, Te Kanawa would be nominated six times. She also appeared on what has become known as the operatic “West Side Story,” singing Maria opposite José Carreras’ Tony, under composer Leonard Bernstein’s direction. That recording was recognized with a Grammy for Best Cast Show Album in 1985.
There followed decades of memorable performances, as Te Kanawa appeared on the stages of most of the world’s major opera houses. In 2009, she announced her retirement from opera, effective the next year. She gave her final recital in 2016.
By then, she had already started giving back, fostering young musicians in New Zealand through the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, which she established in 2004. She also gave masterclasses and sat as a judge in several singing competitions.
In 2013, she made a guest appearance on “Downton Abbey” as the historical Australian soprano Nellie Melba. In 2021, she moved back to her homeland permanently after having lived in the UK for 55 years. She returned briefly in 2022 as part of the New Zealand delegation at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Happy birthday, Dame Kiri, and many happy returns.
An early appearance in the 1966 New Zealand film “Don’t Let It Get You”
Singing Handel at the wedding of Charles and Diana
Decades before singing “O mio babbino caro” on “Downton Abbey,” Te Kanawa received wide exposure through an earlier recording of the aria used in the film “A Room with a View” (1985). Interestingly, both productions employed Maggie Smith as a prim sourpuss.
Happy birthday to classical music’s most renowned “leap baby,” Gioachino Rossini, born on this date in 1792. Rossini shared with young Frederic of the “The Pirates of Penzance” the most ingenious paradox of celebrating a birthday every four years. So, despite the fact that 232 years have passed since his natal day, if we go by actual birthday anniversaries, it’s really only been 56.
Rossini’s furiously productive operatic career spanned less than 20 years, in which he amassed 39 lucrative works for the stage. He retired a wealthy man at the age of 37. He spent his last 35 years living the good life and composing when and what he wanted, including the occasional sacred work and a fair amount of salon music – what he wryly termed his “sins of old age.”
I can tell by your furrowed brow that you’re trying to check my math. Before you quibble, you had better have a look at this, posted four years ago, because I’m certainly not going to take the trouble to explain it myself.
