Ravinia 2019, Issue 4, Week 8

MARIN ALSOP, conductor Marin Alsop’s biography appears on page 101. MICHELLE DEYOUNG, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung’s biography appears on page 103. PAULO SZOT, baritone Paulo Szot’s biography appears on page 104. JAMIE BERNSTEIN, host Jamie Bernstein is an author, narrator, and filmmaker who has transformed a lifetime of loving music into a career of sharing her knowl- edge and excitement with others. Her memoir, Famous Father Girl , which was published last June, details her youth spent in an atmosphere bursting with music, theater, and literature—her father, composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, and her mother, pianist and actress Felicia Mon- tealegre, filled the house with a who’s-who of friends in arts and letters and cultivated Jamie’s lifelong cultural enthusiasm. Inheriting her fa- ther’s passion for communicating excitement about the classical arts, Bernstein has written and narrated concerts for audiences of all ages about Mozart, Copland, and Stravinsky, among others, and she created “The Bernstein Beat,” a family concert about her father modeled after his own groundbreaking Young People’s Con- certs. She also recently devised a spiritual revival of his Young People’s Concerts in “Leonard Ber- nstein: 100 Years Young” for the worldwide cele- bration of his centennial. As a concert narrator, Bernstein has appeared everywhere from Bei- jing to Vancouver to London. In addition to her own scripts, she also performs standard concert narrations such as Walton’s Facade , Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait , and her father’s Symphony No. 3 (“Kaddish”). Additionally, Bernstein is a frequent speaker on musical topics around the world, from conferences in Japan to seminars at Harvard University, and she has produced and hosted radio shows in the United States and the United Kingdom, including live national broad- casts of the New York Philharmonic and from Tanglewood. Bernstein co-directed the docu- mentary Crescendo: The Power of Music , which focuses on children in struggling urban com- munities who participate in socially transforma- tive youth orchestra programs inspired by Ven- ezuela’s groundbreaking El Sistema movement. The film won numerous prizes on the festival circuit. Beyond performance scripts, Bernstein has also written articles and poetry for such publications as Symphony , DoubleTake , Town & Country , Gourmet , Opera News , and Musical America , and she edits “Prelude, Fugue & Riffs,” a newsletter about issues and events pertaining to her father’s legacy. the song “So Pretty.” He composed this antiwar declaration, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, in 1968. Barbra Streisand in- troduced “So Pretty” at a January 21 fundraiser called “Broadway for Peace” in New York’s Phil- harmonic Hall. Selections from West Side Story Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, one E-flat, two B-flat, and bass clarinets, alto saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, a battery of percussion, xylophone, vibraphone, celeste, chimes, harp, piano, and strings West Side Story began as the brainchild of writer Arthur Laurents, choreographer Jerome Rob- bins, and composer Leonard Bernstein. Robbins proposed that this musical adaptation of Shake- speare’s Romeo and Juliet be given a modern, slum setting during Easter/Passover with a vio- lent conflict between Catholics and Jews. How- ever, a struggle along religious lines quickly lost its appeal. Six years later, the Romeo and Juliet idea resur- faced during a poolside conversation at the Bev- erly Hills Hotel. In the aftermath of gang warfare in the Mexican community, Laurents and Ber- nstein introduced a new spin: a clash between Hispanic and Anglo gangs. Laurents then sug- gested teenage gangs, as “the problem of juvenile delinquency was very much in the news.” Lyri- cist Stephen Sondheim, the final member of the creative team, joined in 1955. Several permutations of the title reflected changes in geography and emphasis: first East Side Story , then Gangway! , and finally the fin- ger-snapping West Side Story . The show opened on August 19, 1957, at the National Theatre in Washington, DC, and moved to Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater on September 26, where it ran for 732 performances. Direct parallels with Romeo and Juliet abound. Two battling factions suggest the Capulets and Montagues. A generic Anglo gang, the Jets, defends its turf against the influx of Hispanic youths, the Sharks. The tragic lovers Maria (Ju- liet), a Puerto Rican girl, and Tony (Romeo), a member of the Jets, meet and fall in love at a school dance (the ball). Maria’s brother Bernar- do (Tybalt) kills Tony’s best friend Riff (Mercu- tio). Tony exacts revenge by murdering Bernar- do. In the end, Tony dies in Maria’s arms. –Program notes © 2019 Todd E. Sullivan Video of Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin courtesy of Unitel RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 22 – JULY 28, 2019 112