Listeners’ Choice: Great Met Broadcasts
Saturday, March 4th, 1pm
This year listeners to the Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts chose Donizetti's La Favorita, a 1978 performance starring Shirley Verrett, Luciano Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes, and Bonaldo Giaiotti, conducted by Jesús López-Cobos. The Met says it’s “looking forward to airing this rarely heard – and rarely performed – opera on March 4.”
Sunday Concert Hall - Pittsburgh Symphony
Sunday, March 5th, 2pm
Filled with ambiguity and intrigue, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony was written with a distinct narrative behind the music according to the composer, yet no one alive knows what this story is. Hear the piece that Tchaikovsky poured his “whole soul into,” ultimately leading to his premature death only a week after the original premiere. Also, Pittsburgh Symphony Principal Horn, William Caballero, is soloist in Knussen’s Horn Concerto, along with Prokofiev’s first film score and homage to his Soviet roots in the Suite from Lieutenant Kijé.
La Traviata
Saturday, March 11th, 1pm
Captivating soprano, Angel Blue stars as the self-sacrificing courtesan Violetta, one of opera’s ultimate heroines. Tenor Dmytro Popov is her self-centered lover Alfredo, alongside baritone Artur Ruciński as his disapproving father. Nicola Luisotti conducts.
Verdi’s La Traviata survived a notoriously unsuccessful opening night to become one of the best-loved operas in the repertoire. Following the larger-scale dramas of Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, its intimate scope and subject matter inspired the composer to create some of his most profound and heartfelt music. The title role of the “fallen woman” has captured the imaginations of audiences and performers alike with its inexhaustible vocal and dramatic possibilities—and challenges. Violetta is considered a pinnacle of the soprano repertoire.
Sunday Concert Hall - Pittsburgh Symphony
Sunday, March 5th, 2pm
A magically resonant melody, a lyrically virtuosic violin, and a colorfully bold symphony all converge on this epic program. Hear the heart-wrenching beauty of Vaughan Williams’ epic masterpiece harkening back to his English Renaissance forefathers, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, alongside the long-awaited debut of violinist Alina Ibragimova with Prokofiev’s lyrical Violin Concerto No. 1. Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony, his last, ends the concert with a work clearly paying respect to the composer’s Russian background, a beautiful conclusion to his symphony trifecta.
Lohengrin
Sunday, March 18th, 1pm
Wagner’s soaring masterpiece makes its triumphant return to the Met stage after 17 years. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium to conduct a supreme cast led by tenor Piotr Beczała in the title role of the mysterious swan knight. Soprano Tamara Wilson portrays the virtuous duchess Elsa, falsely accused of murder, soprano Christine Goerke is the cunning sorceress Ortrud, who seeks to lay her low. Bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin is Ortrud’s power-hungry husband, Telramund, and bass Günther Groissböck is King Heinrich.
Lohengrin stands at the epicenter of Richard Wagner’s career—chronologically, thematically, and artistically. It is a Romantic-era reimagining of a persistent Medieval legend about a mystical knight who champions an oppressed maiden on the sole condition that she never ask his name, and the issues at stake range from the spiritual (the role of the divine in human lives) to the political (nation building in times of transition and migration) to the deeply personal (the centrality of mystery in erotic attraction). The wide thematic divergence within the story spurred Wagner to create a score that triumphantly covers all bases, breathtaking in its sweeping variety, yet approachable and theatrically effective.
Sunday Concert Hall - Pittsburgh Symphony
Sunday, March 19th, 2pm
This program features a cascading chain reaction of inspiration. In their writing, Wagner inspired Strauss who inspired Elgar, where each composer drew from the dramatic and passionate style of the former. The program opens with Wagner’s depiction of the Holy Grail, the Prelude to Lohengrin. Richard Strauss shared his contemplation of the transition into death in Death and Transfiguration. On the brighter side, Elgar captured the beauty and majesty of the Italian seaside in his musical postcard, In the South.
Norma
Saturday, March 25th, 1pm
Soprano Sonya Yoncheva adds another major heroine to her impressive list of Met roles, starring as the fearless title priestess of Bellini’s scorching bel canto drama. The extraordinary cast also features tenor Michael Spyres as Norma’s unfaithful Roman lover, Pollione; mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova is Norma’s protégée turned rival, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn takes on the role of Norma’s warrior father out for blood. Maurizio Benini conducts.
Premiered in 1831 at the storied Teatro alla Scala, Milan, this opera is an extraordinary fusion of sublime melody, vocal challenge, and dramatic power. It examines an ageless and archetypal situation: A powerful woman compromises her ideals for love, only to find herself betrayed by her lover. But equally gripping is her relationship with the younger woman who is the new object of her former lover’s attention and in whom Norma sees both a rival and a second self. The title role demands dramatic vocal power combined with the agility and technique of a coloratura singer. It is a daunting challenge that few can rise to: those who have are part of operatic lore.
Sunday Concert Hall - Pittsburgh Symphony
Sunday, March 26th, 2pm
This concert features the Pittsburgh premiere of Joan Tower’s A New Day for cello and orchestra. Joan Tower’s moving work, commissioned for the “technically flawless and deeply expressive” Alisa Weilerstein (The New York Times), tells the beautiful arc of the composer’s final chapter of love with her older husband. The concert opens with Leonard Bernstein’s ebullient Candide Overture and concludes with one of the most-fascinating, bizarre, and opulent orchestral showpieces: Symphonie Fantasitque by Hector Berlioz. It portrays the opium-induced thoughts swirling about the mind of a young swain who fell in love with a woman he saw from afar only once. His obsession leads him through a journey to festive balls, dancing witches, and a march to the scaffold!