Ravinia 2024 Issue 5

her father served as Jailor of Boyle County. Anne married William E. Collins and used Anne Col- lins as her professional name. She first made her mark as a writer in the 1920s, oftentimes in col- laboration with her sister, Alice Timoney. Their three-act comedy Bottled (originally, Bottled in Bond), set in Kentucky near a distillery, opened at the Booth Theatre on April 10, 1928, and ran for two months, receiving generally compli- mentary reviews. Anne’s poem “The Greatest Man” first appeared in the June 7, 1921, edition of the New York Evening Sun . Ives contacted Collins on August 20 for permission to set the poem, which she granted on September 17. Its roughhewn, outdoorsy hero very likely rep- resents her own father, and the young boy narra- tor who speaks with a drawl one of her brothers. Ives composed the music to “When stars are in the quiet skies” around 1898, when the piece was called “Country Celestial” and used a text adapted from St. Bernard of Cluny. He later adjusted the music to fit Heinrich Heine’s “Du bist wie eine Blume.” In its final iteration, Ives underlaid his music with lyrics by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), a politician and popular writer remembered for quotable phras- es, such as “the pen is mightier than the sword” and the “pursuit of the almighty dollar.” Ives matched the romantic images of stars, slumber, and mystic hours with suitably sentimental sa- lon music: “I can but know thee as my star /My guiding star, my angel and my dream.” –Program notes © 2024 Todd E. Sullivan MATTHEW POLENZANI An Evanston, IL, native, tenor Matthew Po- lenzani studied at Eastern Illinois University and the Yale School of Music before becoming a member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s ap- prentice program for two seasons. In 1997, he auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera, and be- fore the year’s end made his debut in Mussorg- sky’s Boris Godunov . Polenzani has appeared on the Met stage every season since, and has been honored with its Beverly Sills Artist Award (2008) and Richard Tucker Award (2004). This season he returned to the company in two Puc- cini roles: Rodolfo in La bohème and Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly . Polenzani’s more than 300 credits on its stage include several Mozart roles—Tamino in The Magic Flute , Ferrando in Così fan tutte , Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni , and the title roles of Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito —his first Vaudémont in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta ; Giasone in Cherubini’s Médée ; Nadir in Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers ; the title role of Of- fenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann ; the Verdi roles of Macduff in Macbeth , Alfredo in La traviata , the Duke in Rigoletto , and the titular Don Car- los; and Donizetti’s Nemorino in The Elixir of Love , Roberto in Maria Stuarda , and the titular Roberto Devereux, the latter two in the Met’s first productions of each opera. This season, Polenzani made role debuts as Orombello in Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda at Teatro di San Carlo and as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio at Sta- atsoper Hamburg, and recently as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca at the Savonlinna Opera Fes- tival and Don José in Bizet’s Carmen with San Francisco Opera. He is a veteran of Lyric Op- era of Chicago—where he gave his first essay of Massenet’s titular Werther in 2012—Seattle Op- era, Los Angeles Opera, Paris National Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, London’s Royal Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and the Vienna, Bavarian and Hungarian State Operas, as well as Milan’s La Scala, Madrid’s Teatro Real, and all three stages at Carnegie Hall, among many others. Following his Ravinia debut in 1995, Matthew Polenzani has led master classes for the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Program for Singers in 2016, 2019, and 2022. Together with his performance as Mozart’s titular Idomeneo earlier this month, these performances mark his eighth summer at the festival. KEVIN MURPHY New York native Kevin Murphy studied piano performance at Indiana University under Men- ahem Pressler and James Tocco, completing a Bachelor of Music, and later studied piano ac- companiment at the Curtis Institute, earning a master’s degree. In 1992 he was invited to be the first pianist and vocal coach to participate in the Lindemann Young Artist Program of the Met- ropolitan Opera, where he was an assistant con- ductor from the following year until 2006, when he was named director of musical studies for the Paris National Opera. Murphy has played harp- sichord continuo with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in productions of Rossini’s La Cen- erentola and Mozart’s Così fan tutte , The Mar- riage of Figaro , Idomeneo , La clemenza di Tito , and Don Giovanni —also performing that role in productions of several of those opera at Ravin- ia—and traveled with the company on tour to Japan, where he has played and been a musical assistant for the Seiji Ozawa Opera Project. He also regularly collaborates with such artists as Michelle DeYoung, Gary Lakes, Kathleen Bat- tle, Nathan Gunn, Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Gerald Finley, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Pinchas Zukerman. Murphy has been a vocal coach at San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, the International Vocal Arts Institute, Glim- merglass Opera, Tanglewood, and The Juilliard School; an opera coach for the Canadian Opera Company and Netherlands Opera; and a regular adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera Nation- al Council Auditions. He was director of music administration for New York City Opera from 2008 until 2011, when he joined the faculty of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music; in 2016, he became co-director in creating Jacobs’s graduate program in collaborative piano. He is Artistic Director of the Tel Aviv International Summer Opera Program and a frequent guest vocal coach with Santa Fe Opera, also joining Los Angeles Opera in that role in 2023. This is Kevin Murphy’s 14th season in performance at Ravinia, where he first appeared in 2004, and his 13th year as Artistic Director of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Program for Singers. Last summer, he made his Chicago Symphony Or- chestra debut as a piano soloist at Ravinia. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 65 FAYFOX(POLENZANI);RUSSELLJENKINS/RAVINIA(MURPHY)