Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 10

Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragón, Luna found work as a violinist in orchestras, churches, and theaters throughout the province of Zaragoza, becoming concertmaster of the Te- atro Circo in 1900. Five years later, Luna moved to Madrid as principal second violinist of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, where he developed as a composer under the tutelage of zarzuela masters Ruperto Chapí and Gerónimo Giménez, among others. His breakthrough success as a composer came with Molinos de viento (Windmills; 1910), a zarzuela that enthralled audiences in Seville with its colorful Dutch setting and elegant mod- ern score. Luna fashioned his two-act El niño judio (The Jewish Boy; 1918), based on a libretto by Antonio Paso and Enrique García Álvarez, to the evolving taste of audiences in Madrid, where zarzuelas had recently begun to absorb elements of Viennese operetta. Samuel, a youthful Jewish attendant at a street- side bookstall in Madrid, loves Concha, the daughter of the wealthy Jenaro, who considers the impecunious young man an unworthy suit- or. On his deathbed, Samuel’s “father” reveals that he is not, in fact, his biological parent. Rath- er, he and the boy’s mother, Esther, kidnapped Samuel as a baby before running off to Spain. Based on this information, Samuel, Concha, and Jenaro journey to Jewish Aleppo and India in an attempt to track down the “real” father, rumored to be the wealthy Samuel Barchilón or the fabu- lously rich Rajah Jamar-Jalea. Concha tells the rajah of her enchanting homeland and the “gyp- sy” boy who enflames her heart in “De España vengo, soy española.” In a twist of fate, Samuel learns that Esther is not his biological parent ei- ther, but that he was born to a poor servant girl. Despite his humble origins, Samuel has demon- strated strength of character during the journey, and Jenaro blesses his marriage to Concha. RUPERTO CHAPÍ (1851–1909) “Carceleras” from Las hijas del Zebedeo Ruperto Chapí grew up in the small Valencian town of Villena, the son of a barber. As a youth, he played piccolo in the local band and began composing and arranging for that ensemble at age 9. Chapí became conductor of the town band in nearby Alicante at age 15, the same year of his first zarzuela, La estrella del bosque . In 1867, the teenager entered the Madrid Conser- vatory and studied under the tutelage of Miguel Galiana (harmony) and Emilio Arrieta (compo- sition). Chapí earned first prize in composition at the Madrid Conservatory in 1872 and, after receiving a scholarship, entered the Paris Con- servatory to study composition. After returning to Madrid in 1878, Chapí emerged as a major composer of opera and all forms of zarzuela, the Spanish form of lyric theater. Las hijas del Zebedeo (The Daughters of Zebe- dee) premiered at Madrid’s Teatro Maravillas on July 9, 1889. Its comic libretto by José Estremera Cuenca, combined with Chapí’s lively musical score, made it the sensation of the summer of 1899. “Carceleras” (or “Al pensar en el dueño de mis amores” [When Thinking of the Owner of My Heart]) is the second-act romance sung by Luisa, a young tailor and girlfriend of Artu- ro, the son of Tomasa and Felipe, owner of the open-air café “El Zebedeo.” BRUCE ADOLPHE (b. 1955) Valley Girl in Love from A Thousand Years of Love Bruce Adolphe enjoys a widespread following for his ingenious, multifaceted work as a com- poser, pianist, educator, humanitarian, and radio personality. He has sustained a long re- lationship with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, currently serving as its Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Programs, a role that has inspired numerous kid-friendly compositions about artists, writers, colors, cit- ies, folktales, other cultures, and dinosaurs, no- tably Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto , commissioned in 2000 by the Chicago Chamber Musicians for the unveiling of the T. rex skele- ton, SUE, at the Field Museum of Chicago. Adolphe composed A Thousand Years of Love (1999) for soprano Sylvia McNair, who gave the premiere in Alice Tully Hall in October 2001 with the composer at the piano. This 10-song cycle was commissioned by Millennium Con- sortium/Music Accord for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The texts come from poets widely separated in location and time peri- od: Ono No Komachi (9th-century Japan), Jalāl ad-DīnMuhammad Rūmī (13th-century Persia), William Shakespeare (Elizabethan England), Ri- dolfo Arlotti (late-16th/early-17th-century Ferr- ara), Armand Silvestre (19th-century France), various anonymous texts, and Adolphe himself. Valley Girl in Love , the penultimate song in the cycle, comically juxtaposes Adolphe’s spot-on impersonation of the vacuous speech associated with upper-class adolescent girls in California’s San Fernando Valley during the 1980s with a mock-serious musical setting. JAKE HEGGIE (b. 1961) Three songs Celebrated American composer Jake Heggie writes sophisticated, poetically inspired music that equally conveys a sense of drama, compas- sion, and deep human emotion. “I think there’s this natural instinct that comes from a very, very deep place in Jake,” says mezzo-soprano Frederi- ca von Stade, one of Heggie’s frequent collabo- rators. “He’s enormously sympathetic and very caring about people, and that comes out in his music.” This profound humanity sheds light on his partiality for the voice, a medium that pro- motes close interaction with singers, from the point of inspiration through the creative process. Heggie composed the song cycle Paper Wings (1997) in close partnership with von Stade, who wrote the lyrics in honor of her second daughter, Lisa Elkus. “Obviously, this piece was already meant to be a portrait of a mother and daugh- ter,” Heggie explained. “It was very specific, so it seemed right to go to the source.” Indeed, the four poems—“Bedtime Story,” “Paper Wings,” “Mitten Smitten,” and “A Route to the Sky”— tenderly reveal the playfulness and intimacy displayed by a mother toward her child. Von Stade and pianist Martin Katz gave the premiere on September 20, 1997, at the University of Cal- ifornia, Berkeley. [Heggie also has a strong relationship with Ra- vinia, beginning with its co-commission of Songs to the Moon for von Stade in 1998. His song cy- cles Here and Gone , Facing Forward/Looking Back , and Newer Every Day were commissioned by the festival, the latter for Kiri Te Kanawa and premiered with Heggie at the piano. He also brought his one act opera To Hell and Back , star- ring Patti LuPone, to Ravinia in 2007.] Natural Selection , based on poems by Gini Sav- age, also dates from 1997. Heggie dedicated this song cycle to soprano Nicolle Foland, who gave the premiere with pianist Donald Runnicles on April 27, 1997, at the Old First Church in San Francisco. The five poems trace a young wom- an’s search for personal identity, from her sexual awakening in “Animal Passion” to the consola- tion of aloneness after a failed relationship in “Joy Alone (Connection).” SPIRITUALS The origins of the African American spiritual remain obscured by years of silence. The first written accounts, dating from the first half of the 19th century, leave only vague impressions of a unison singing style (or heterophony, that is, si- multaneous variations of a single melody), slid- ing vocal ornaments, and brief text fragments. Camp meetings and religious services attended by black and white Christians offered fertile soil Jake Heggie AUGUST 5 – AUGUST 11, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 99