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55th Dubrovnik Summer Festival
2004
Croatia
MANUEL LANZA
baritone
MARÍA GUEDÁN
soprano
MARÍA ELENA DE MIGUEL GONZÁLEZ
piano
Rector's Palace Atrium
15 August
9.30 pm
Giuseppe Verdi: UN BALLO IN MASCHERA
A tal colpa è nulla il pianto..., prizor Amelije i Renata
Morrò, ma prima in grazia..., Amelijina arija
Eri tu che macchiavi quel anima..., Renatova arija
Ruggero Leoncavallo: I PAGLIACCI
Silvio, a questa'ora..., duet Nedde i Silvija
Giuseppe Verdi: DON CARLOS
Per me giunto è il di supremo..., arija Pose
Arrigo Boito: MEFISTOFELE
L' altra notte..., arija Margherite
Giuseppe Verdi: TRUBADUR
Udite!..., duet Leonore i grofa Lune
*****
Charles Gounod: FAUST
O, sainte medaille..., arija Valentina
Giacomo Puccini: MANON LESCAUT
Sola, perduta, abbandonata..., arija Manon
Reveriano Soutullo – Juan Vert: LA DEL SOTO DEL PARRAL
Ya mis horas felices..., romanca Germána
Ten pena de mis dolores..., duet Aurore i Germána
Pablo Sorozábal: LA DEL MANOJO DE ROSAS
No corté más que una rosa..., Ascensiónina romanca
Hoce tiempo que vengo al taller..., duet Ascención i Joaquína
The famous Spanish Baritone Manuel Lanza (1965) was born in Santander, where he
commenced his musical training. He later studied at the Music College in Madrid with
Isabel Penagos. He won first prizes at the Logroño National Singing Competition and
“Julian Gayarre” International Singing Competition in Pamplona. He made his debut
in 1990 at the La Zarzuela Theatre in Madrid in La del Manojo de Rosas, in 1992 at
the Rossini Opera Festival with La Scala di Seta, in 1993 at the MET in New York
with La Boheme, in 1995 at the Vienna State Opera with Il Barbiere de Siviglia and in
1996 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan with Les Troyens. His repertoire includes more
than 30 operas, performed at the world’s major stages (Berlin, Munich, Hamburg,
Vienna, Salzburg, Zürich, Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Milan, Florence, Parma,
Trieste, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Pittsburgh, Mexico City, Miami,
Oviedo, Santander, Las Palmas etc.). He worked with the famous conductors such as
Sir Colin Davis, Lorin Maazel, Nello Santi, Lawrence Foster, Marcello Viotti,
Richard Bonynge and stage directors like Franco Zeffirelli, Jonathan Miller, Giorgio
Strehler, Emilio Sagi and others. He performed in the well-known Zarzuelas (La
Revoltosa, La Verbena de La Paloma, La del Soto del Parral) in Madrid and Buenos
Aires. His recordings include CDs El Barberillo de Lavapies Auvidis/Valois) and La
Dolores (with Placido Domingo for DECCA) that was awarded Grammy for the best
classic album. He also features Figaro in the Zurich's new DVD production of Il
Barbiere de Siviglia (EUROARTS).
Spanish soprano María Guedán (1969) was born in Madrid, where she studied at the
High School of Singing and started with her first professional appearances in
Santander and Madrid (Rigoletto, L’Elisir d’amore and Le nozze di Figaro), Bilbao
(Don Carlos) and La Coruña (Manon). In 1998 she made her debut as soloist atTeatro
de la Zarzuela in Madrid with Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle. There she also sung
leading roles in the Spanish operas La Pícara Molinera, La Revoltosa, Los Gavilanes
and La Leyenda Del Beso. At the same time she performed in many concerts, operas
and zarzuelas all over Spain and worked with the conductors such as Emilio Sagi,
Jonathan Miller, Mario Gas, Luis Iturri an Horacio Rodriguez Aragón. She appeared
with the most prestigious artists including Manuel Lanza, Luis Lima, Carlos Alvarez,
John Rawnsleigh, Sung Eun Kim, María José Moreno, Lucio Gallo and Carlos
Chausson. In 2004 she tours with Manuel Lanza, which includes performance in
Dvořák’s Stabat Mater in Pamplona. With tenor José Sempere she recorded a CD
with the most popular zarzuelas.
Born in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos), the Spanish pianist María Elena de Miguel
González began to study the piano in her hometown. Having completed the
secondary school, she studied at the High School of Music with D. Mario Monreal.
Still a student she won at the International Piano Competition Ataúlfo Argenta in
Santander. Afterwards she began her career in vocal, chamber and operatic piano
accompaniment. Followed her collaboration with the Asociación Cántabra de Amigos
de la Opera in many productions of opera and zarzuela. She moved to Madrid in
1991, where she worked at the High School of Singing, cherishing various music
styles from baroque to the contemporary music theatre. Since 1997 she is also
engaged as rehearser at the Madrid Chamber Opera and at the 21st Century Opera. As
piano accompanist she took part in numerous Spanish singing competitions. Her
operatic repertoire includes the composers from Monteverdi, Verdi and Puccini to
Schönberg, Menotti and Bussotti and her Spanish repertoire includes zarzuelas and
classical concert songs (de Falla, Granados, Turina, Obradors, Rodrigo, Mompou and
Montsalvages). In 2003 she made her acclaimed debut with Danza en Voz and for the
last couple of years she has accompanied the two soloists performing at the tonight’s
concert.
Several major features make the famous opera master Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
superior to most of his close and remote successors. His exceptional talent for nuances
within the basic matter, distinctive expression and formidably balanced development
both of the dramatic and the musical processes found the perfect way between the
music and the theatre. Opera in three acts, Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)
from 1858, was inspired by Scribe’s play Gustave III, on the basis of which Piave had
already written libretto for Rossini and later for Auber. Libretto for Verdi’s opera was
written by the famous Antonio Somma and the piece was to be first performed at the
San Carlo in Naples. Yet, for political reasons, the opera got its present name and was
first performed at the Apollo Theatre in Rome only on 17th February 1859. The opera
belongs to Verdi’s transition period when he had already forgotten the beginner’s
failures and composed three masterpieces form his central composing phase;
however, the final true masterpieces were still to be composed. The full maturity of
the structure of the classicist type, in which vocal and orchestral parts never give
precedence over each other, the almost Mozartian solving of the psychological
nuances, but also the great emotional power, a certain transcendentality of the
atmosphere, actions and events, a subtle Shakespearean mixing of the tragic and the
comic – all this gives the opera a flavour of the contemporary theatre of absurd. The
tragedy, or more precisely, the dramatic poem from the Spanish 16th century, Don
Carlos, in which Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) intensively worked on “blending
the private and political drama”, found its adequate musical echo in the namesake
Verdi’s five-acts opera (to libretto by François Joseph Méry and Camille Du Locle),
composed in 1876 and first performed on 11th March that same year at the Grand
Opera in Paris, The opera was thoroughly revised in 1883.
In his four-acts opera Il Trovatore (The Troubadour), to libretto by Salvatore
Cammarano after the play by Antonio García Gutierréz, from 1853, first performed on
19th January that same year at the Apollo Theatre in Rome, Verdi in a synthetically
skilful way manipulates with pathetic-romantic props of the surpassed operatic
dramaturgy (Gypsy tents, chains, dungeon, poison). Despite the disunion of the plot
and occasional illogicallity of the text, Verdi manages to achieve “the organic
compactness and unity of style in the heterogeneous scenes.”
One of the foremost representatives of the Italian Verismo Ruggero Leoncavallo
(1858-1919), often his own librettist, never aimed to beautify but preferred to present
the ruder side of life. Full of dynamic contrasts and orchestral effects, his music
abounds with broad melody with prevailing Mediterranean sensuality and
sentimentality. His best work is opera in two acts I Pagliacci, usually staged together
with Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. Composed on LeoncavalIo’s own libretto,
opera I Pagliacci (Clowns) was first performed on 21st May 1892 at the Teatro dal
Verme in Milan. Inspired by a real event in a life of a travelling company of actors,
the story takes place in Calabria in 1865. Leoncavallo inspiringly conjured up a
bloody intermingling of the comedy on the stage and the tragedy in the real life,
where the unfaithfulness causes jealousy, revenge and murder.
Verdi’s friend and librettist Arrigo Boito (1842 - 1918) was a talented poet and
interesting composer. The critic and controversialist in his younger days, later the
revolutionary who saw Wagnerian reform as the salvation of the European opera,
author of numerous librettos (for his own and for the works of Ponchielli and Catalani
among others), composed two operas: Nerone and Mefistofele after Goethe’s Faust.
He worked on this opera almost his entire life. After the failure of its first
performance in 1868, it took him a long time to rewrite and rearrange it. It was staged
only in 1875, yet again in its incomplete version (the opera was completed by V.
Tommasini and Arturo Toscanini). Transforming the philosophic depth of the
Goethe’s masterpiece into music, Boito displayed a strong melodic impression and
rich imagination in his Mefistofele, approaching the thematic closer than any of his
predecessors.
One of the first lyric composers of the French opera at the time Charles Gounod
(1818 - 1893) - having avoided all philosophic and symbolic background of the
universal masterpiece of the world literature, the far-reaching and still actual warning
of the deterioration and evil, Goethe's Faust - dedicated his only preserved opera
Faust (in five acts, to linretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, first performed on
19th March 1859 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris) to the love episode of Faust and
Marguérite from the first part of the tragedy. Starting from the aria simplicity and
applying the declamative-recitative principle, Gounod's music reaches a powerful
dramatic climax and suffocates in the sufferings of its characters.
Although ocassionaly flirting with verism, the major Italian opera composer after
Verdi, Giacomo Puccini (1858 –1924 ), in his essence remains a pronounced lateromantic composer following the lyrical elements of Massenet. He reinforces his own
structure by the tonal means employed by Debussy and also accepts some technical
inventions of the young Stravinsky. By his masterful dramatic form and rich
invention, Puccini almost regularly places a tragic female character in the centre of
the plot, often coming from an exotic surrounding, which Puccini describes expertly
and sugestively. His early opera Manon Lescaut in four acts was composed from
1891 to 1892 to libretto by Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva and Luigi Illica (after
Antoine-François Prevost’s novel) and first performed on 1st February 1983 at the
Teatro Regio in Turin. Intensively collaborating with the librettists, Puccini attempted
to create a somewhat different version of the adventurous love drama taking place in
France and the North America, which Jules Massenet already treated in his opera
Manon. In Puccini's scores we find the thematic fragments and orchestral effects that
already announce operas Madama Butterfly and Tosca. It also includes the sounds that
had never appeared in opera before, including the impressionist effects. Puccini was
not familiar with Debussy’s music at the time. Puccini’s rich music stream is
characteristic of the two basic features: melodic abundance and an exceptional feeling
of the orchestral colour, which he so masterfully amalgamated.
Zarzuela, the Spanish music-stage form with spoken dialogue, including musical and
dance numbers, comes from the early 17th century. First zarzuelas were performed at
royal palace of La Zarzuela near Madrid on festivities called the Fiestas de Zarzuela.
Their story usually had mythological or heroic meaning. The first librettist of
zarzuelas was playwright Calderon de la Barca and the music for the oldest preserved
zarzuela Celos, aún del aire, matan was composed by J. Hidalgo (1600 –1685). In the
late 17th and early 18th century, very popular among the aristocracy was the zarzuela
with mythological contents, simmilar to the French Ballet de cour. In time zarzuela
acquires elements both of the folk tonadilla and the Italian comic opera. Revived in
the 19th century Spain, it becomes major national music form, so that a special
zarzuela theatre was built in Madrid. The zarzuela libretto is usually conventional and
occasionally written in verse. The music is inspired by Spanish folk songs, filled with
the varied Spanish colouring, particularly in the dances. At times it embraces features
of the Viennese operetta and jazz.
Spanish composer Reveriano Soutullo (1884 - 1932) was born in Puenteáreas
(Pontevedra), into a family of musicians. He started to study music with his father and
later graduated from the Music Conservatory in Madrid. He continued his studies in
Germany, Italy and France and, having returned to Madrid, dedicated himself to
composing, particularly to stage music.
Spanish composer Juan Vert (1890 - 1931) was born in Carcagente (Valencia), also
in the family of musicians. He at first studied music with his father and later studied
the composition and harmony at the Valencia Conservatory. At the Madrid
Conservatory, he was particularly engaged in studying the art of zarzuela. There he
met Soutull in the school year 1923-1924, with whom he found the mutual melodicharmonic language. In no time they managed to compose popular zarzuelas together
such as La leyenda del beso (1924), Encarna, la Misterio (1925), La del Soto del
Parral (1927) and El último romántico (1928). The collaboration was interrupted by
the early Vert’s death (1931) and Soutullo died from the consequences of a car crash
in Madrid the following year. The two-acts zarzuela La del Soto del Paral (to libretto
by Fernández de Sevilla and Anselmo C. Carrena) was first performed with a great
success on 26th October 1927 at the Teatro de la Latina in Madrid.
Spanish composer Pablo Sorozabál (1897 – 1958) started to study music in Paris
(solfeggio with Manuel Cendoya, the violin with Alfredo Larroche and the piano with
Germán Cendoya). He also sung in the local children’s choir and started to perform as
violinist in nightclubs, cafés and movie and theatre halls. In 1914 he was engaged as
violinist at a casino orchestra in San Sebastian for a five-years period. In 1919 he goes
to Madrid and begins to play in the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra. He later studied
counterpoint with Stephan Krehl in Lepzig and the violin with Hans Sitto and
composition with Friedrich Koch in Berlin. In 1928 he returned to his homeland,
where the first performances of his own pieces were warmly received. His acclaimed
first zarzuela Katiuska (the text by Emilio Gonzáles del Castillo and Manuel Martí
Alons), was premièred in Barcelona in 1931 and in Madrid the following year. His
other major stage pieces are La isla de las perlas (1932), Adios a la bohemia (1933),
La del manojo de rosas (to libretto by Ramos de Castro y Carreña, first performed in
November 1934 at the Teatro Fuencarral), No me olvides (1935), La tabernea del
puerto, Black el payaso and Don Manolito (1942). The zarzuela La del manojo de
rosas is probably the most successful piece of the “Spanish Kurt Weill”, the master of
the subtly sensual melodic lyric, harmonic maturity and depth, and of a lively and
indestructible rhythm.
D. Detoni