Opera

Lehár’s “The Merry Widow” Waltz: Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann

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It’s one of the most beautiful and infectious melodies ever written, and it forms the emotional climax of Franz Lehár’s 1905 comic operetta, The Merry Widow.  Coming at the end of Act III, Lippen schweigen (“Lips are Silent”) is the duet in which Hanna (The Merry Widow) and Count Danilo express their love for one another. Throughout the operetta, the graceful Viennese melody is woven into the background as a dance piece, foreshadowing …

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Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” Prelude to Act I: Rudolf Kempe and the Vienna Philharmonic

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The Prelude to the first act of Wagner’s 1850 opera, Lohengrin, unfolds as a gradual cosmic crescendo before fading again into silence. It begins in the highest register of the orchestra with a shimmering, prolonged A major chord. Angelic harmonics in divided solo violin lines alternate and overlap with woodwind voices to create a dreamy shifting kaleidoscope of tonal color. At moments, the familiar instruments of the orchestra seem to dissolve into …

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Remembering Felicity Lott

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English soprano Felicity Lott passed away on May 15 following a battle with cancer. She was 79. Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Lott began singing lessons at age 12. While studying at the Royal Academy of Music she met pianist Graham Johnson who would become her lifelong accompanist. Her operatic debut came with the English National Opera in 1975 when she sang the role of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Appearances at …

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Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” Overture: Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

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When Andris Nelsons was five years old, his parents took him to see a production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The Latvian conductor recalls that his parents prepared him for the occasion by playing an LP of the opera at home. He was also introduced to the story, based on German medieval legend, of a knight who is pulled between the pleasures of earthly love and lust and the redemptive love of sacred devotion. According …

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Mozart’s “The Impresario” Overture: Comedy with Music

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In January of 1786, Mozart was hard at work on The Marriage of Figaro when he received an attractive imperial commission. Emperor Joseph II was hosting visiting nobility at Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace. The festivities included a duel between two competing forms of opera. At one end of the room was Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, K. 486 (“The Impresario”), representing German singspiel. At the other end, Antonio Salieri represented Italian opera buffa with Prima la …

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Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2: From Imprisonment to Freedom

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Beethoven was a composer who worked and reworked musical ideas in a painstaking series of sketches. His only opera, Fidelio, provides the most extreme example. Beethoven labored over it for over ten years, creating three distinct versions (1805, 1806, and 1814), and four different overtures. The overture we know as Leonore No. 2, Op. 42a opened the original 1805 Vienna premiere of Fidelio. Ultimately, Beethoven believed that the dramatic weight of the …

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André Previn’s “I Want Magic” from “A Streetcar Named Desire”: Renée Fleming

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I Want Magic is a key aria from the third act of André Previn’s 1995 opera, A Streetcar Named Desire.  With a libretto by Philip Littell, the work, premiered by San Francisco Opera in 1998, is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. Renée Fleming appeared in the role of Blanche Dubois, a promiscuous, aging Southern belle who escapes into a veiled fantasy world to avoid confronting the harsh realities …

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