Monthly Archives: November 2021

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November 22, 2021

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The Parker Quartet: Love Letters across the Centuries

Program features works by Adolphus Hailstork, György Kurtág, Alban Berg and Schumann. 

By Izzy Fincher Nov. 22 at 9:15 a.m.

Alan Berg’s Lyric Suite from 1926 has been called “a latent opera.” The sweeping, programmatic, six-movement work, mostly built on a 12-tone row, certainly feels like one. 

Through hidden musical devices and quotations, Berg depicts his passionate, yet doomed love affair with a married woman, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. He even uses numerology to turn his and Hanna’s initials a motif of paired notes, A-Bb and B-F for H.B. and H.F. It’s the ultimate musical love letter. 

This suite was the centerpiece of the Parker Quartet’s performance in Grusin Hall on Sunday (Nov. 21) as the guest artists for CU Presents’ Takács Quartet series. Despite their eclectic program, which ranged from contemporary works by Adolphus Hailstork, György Kurtág (one of the quartet’s early mentors) and Alban Berg to a string quartet by Schumann, the performance felt cohesive, tied together by themes of love and loss across the centuries.  

Parker Quartet (L-R: Jessica Bodner, Daniel Chong, Ken Hamao, Kee-Hyun Kim). Photo by Luke Ratray.

Founded in 2002 at the New England Conservatory, the Parker Quartet has established itself as one of leading string quartets for traditional and contemporary repertoire in the U.S. Their 2011 album, Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2, received a Grammy Award for the Best Chamber Music Performance, and they have premiered works by leading contemporary composers, including Jeremy Gill, Augusta Read Thomas and Zosha di Castri. The quartet members are currently artists-in-residence at Harvard University.

The concert opened with the reflective Adagio from Hailstork’s String Quartet No. 1, based on a choral piece written for his Norfolk Unitarian church that is set to a text about being a generous, loving Christian man. Following this, the quartet’s charismatic violinist Daniel Chong introduced the theme of the program: love in its various forms. This would be continued in Kurtág’s Aus der Ferne V (From afar), a brief, mournful work dedicated to his late friend and publisher Alfred Schlee, who rescued many contemporary scores from the Nazis; Berg’s Lyric Suite; and Schumann’s String Quartet No. 3 in A major, a 23rd birthday present for his beloved wife, Clara. 

In the evocative Aus der Ferne V, cellist Kee-Hyun Kim drove the piece forward with ominous pizzicato, reminiscent of a heartbeat, over the sustained lines on the violins and viola that exploded in short dissonant bursts before gradually fading away. 

This three-minute vignette set the scene for the highlight of the program, Berg’s Lyric Suite, which Chong described as “the most expressive string quartet in the canon” in his introduction. In the suite, the Parker Quartet demonstrated their impressive ability to blend, while bringing different instruments out of the texture as needed, creating a dialogue out of the building and developing motifs. Through their expressive use of colors and dynamics, they also captured the contrasting moods Berg experiences as he falls madly in love and later descends into despair. 

In the first movement, marked Allegretto gioviale, the Parker Quartet burst into joyful motion led by Chong’s lively opening gesture. This energy built through the next four movements, which all have expressive names: Andante amoroso, Allegro misterioso—Trio estatico, Adagio appassionato and Presto delirando—Tenebroso. 

In the third movement, the hidden initials motif appears most frequently, amidst the combination of wandering pizzicato and warbly lines that sound more chaotically improvisatory than mysterious, an instability the Parker Quartet communicated very well before building to the agitated trio and the dynamic presto that ends with a climactic flourish. The final movement, Largo desolato, which includes the iconic Tristan motif associated with eternal love, demanded the most musical versatility from the musicians, as moments from earlier happier movements appear briefly before sinking into despair. 

Following this depressing love story, the Parker Quartet shifted to a light-hearted work for the second half, Schumann’s String Quartet No. 3. After an hour of intense contemporary repertoire, this leap back into an earlier era felt a bit strange. Given the crowd’s excited chatter during intermission, however, a familiar work seemed to be a welcome respite after atonal explorations. 

During his career, Schumann only wrote three quartets. They were written together as Op. 41, a birthday present to his wife that was composed in the span of five weeks in 1842. These quartets incorporate elements of Schumann’s influences from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and his friend Mendelssohn, while still retaining his own personal, Romantic style and at times expanding it. 

In their animated interpretation of No. 3, the Parker Quartet exhibited their impeccable synchronicity, bow strokes moving as one. With clear, strong downbeats, Kim on cello led this, though perhaps a bit too forcefully in the calmer Adagio molto movement. With the last movement, a showy crowd pleaser marked molto vivace, the quartet ended the performance on an uplifting note, a reminder of the excitement and joy of young love.  

The program will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. tonight, Nov. 22, in Grusin Hall. Tickets are available here.

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November 19, 2021

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Ivalas String Quartet will play at Museum of Boulder Sunday

Program features works by Haydn, Bartók and Carlos Simon

By Peter Alexander Nov. 19 at 10:45 a.m.

The Ivalas Quartet, the graduate quartet-in-residence at the CU College of Music, will be featured in a performance at the Museum of Boulder at 6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21.

The performance will take place in one of the museum’s galleries. Chairs will be set up in the gallery for the audience, with a capacity of around 40 listeners.  Tickets are available from Eventbrite and include admission to the museum. Masks are required for anyone ages two and up. 

Ivalas Quartet: Reuben Kebede, Tiani Butts, Pedro Sánchez and Aimée McAnulty

Formed at the University of Michigan in 2016, the Ivalas Quartet came to CU in the fall of 2019 to study with the members of the Takács Quartet. Since their initial performances on campus they have changed their second violinist, but the quartet remains dedicated to the ideal of inclusion, in both repertoire and membership.

That ideal is central to the quartet’s identity as stated on their Web page: “The Ivalas Quartet was formed after a conversation about a feeling of absence we share—how we rarely saw our faces and cultures in classical music. As members of Black and Latinx communities, we saw a lack of representation, of celebration, and of classical music-making from our own communities and to our own communities.”

Their repertoire often includes works by underrepresented BIPOC composers alongside works from the standard classical canon. They have worked actively to advance their goals, working with El Sistema Colorado and presenting educational programming through Sphinx—a social justice organization that stresses the power of diversity in the arts—engaging with schools with Black and Latinx students in Detroit.

Carlos Simon

Sunday’s concert is characteristic of Ivala’s programming, featuring Haydn’s last String Quartet, op. 77 no. 2; the Third String Quartet of Bartók; and Warmth of Other Suns by African-American composer Carlos Simon. Commissioned by the Sphinx Organization, Warmth of Other Suns was inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s book of the same title that chronicled the “Great Migration” of African Americans out of the South in the years 1916–70.

A native of Atlanta, Ga., Simon is composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and recently received the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence. He has received commissions from major performing groups including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Washington National Opera and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others. 

The performance will be hosted by the Altius Collective, a project founded by former members of the Altius Quartet, a prior graduate quartet-in-residence at the CU College of Music. It is one of a planned ongoing series of chamber music concerts, both at the Museum of Boulder and in other communities in the region. 

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Ivalas Quartet

  • Joseph Haydn: String Quartet op. 77 no. 2 in F major
  • Carlos Simon: Warmth of Other Suns
  • Béla Bartók: String Quartet No. 3

6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21
Museum of Boulder at Tebo Center

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November 17, 2021

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The Parker Quartet from Harvard will perform Sunday and Monday at CU

They will play in Grusin Hall as guests of CU’s Takacs Quartet

By Peter Alexander Nov. 17 at 5:20 p.m.

The Parker Quartet may be the only string quartet named for a hotel.

Formed when the original members were students at the New England Conservatory, they wanted a name that reflected their connection to Boston. “None of us is from Boston, but we call Boston home,” says Ken Hamao, the quartet’s second violinist. “To have a landmark from the city to name ourselves after was appropriate.”

Parker Quartet. Photo by Luke Ratray

Today the Parker Quartet members maintain their ties to Boston, as Blodgett Artists-in-residence and faculty at Harvard University’s department of music. 

The landmark is the Parker House, which you may recognize from dinner rolls but which was an important gathering place for America’s literary figures in the 19th century, including Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau, and later for politicians including presidents U.S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

The Parker Quartet will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21, and 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 22, in Grusin Hall. They are appearing in the guest slot on the fall concert series of CU’s Takacs Quartet. Their eclectic program features the Lyric Suite by Alban Berg and the Third String Quartet of Robert Schumann, as well as shorter works by Adolphus Hailstork and György Kurtág.

Both in-person and digital tickets can be purchased from CU Presents. Masks are required in all indoor spaces in the CU campus, regardless of vaccination status.

Alban Berg

The central work on the program is Berg’s Lyric Suite, an emotionally and musically challenging work in six intense movements. It has always been seen as a dramatic and passionate piece of music, but more than 50 years after it was written in 1926, a secret “program” was found embedded in the score that explained the intensity of the music.

A combination of musical initials standing for the composer and his lover, multiple other musical symbols, the inclusion of Wagner’s Tristan chord and other musical references, all reflect Berg’s passionate and illicit affair with a married woman, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Even the movement titles suggest the subject: amoroso (lovingly), appassionato (passionately) and estatico (ecstatic).

But you don’t need to know the story to appreciate the music, Hamao says. “For us as performers, it helps us to get into the composer’s mindset, but on its own it’s just a very dynamic work, hugely expressive,” he says.

“We’ve been talking about performing it for many years, and after so many years you want to tell each other, ‘Let’s just go for it’. It’s really exciting (because) it has that drama, the very, very highs and the very, very lows of the affair. It did make sense (with) the Schumann as a companion piece. The Lyric Suite is as passionate as it also is desolate, while the Schumann is more uplifting.”

Calra Schumann. Portrait by Franz von Lenbach

Hamao describes the Schumann Third Quartet as representing a different kind of romantic love, that of the composer for his wife, Clara Schumann. “It’s just a love letter to his wife,” he says. “From the very first two notes that you hear, this Clara motive, he’s yearning for his wife. From the first page it’s a declaration of love.”

Hailstork’s Adagio is a piece that the quartet discovered more recently. “It was a piece that we fell in love with immediately and wanted to program it as soon as we can,” Hamao says. “In a program that can be as intense as the Lyric Suite can be, having this beautiful Adagio made a lot of sense to us.

“I think of it as an incredibly beautiful piece that kind of discovers itself throughout the whole piece. It’s definitely tonal but has what you might call notes that don’t quite belong to the scale. For a beautiful piece there’s a lot of surprises, but at the end of the day it’s a really gorgeous movement.”

Kurtág’s Aus der Ferne (From the distance) V is one of a group of pieces for different media. Two of are for string quartet—Aus der Ferne III and V. The Parker Quartet has worked directly with the composer in the past, and recently released a CD recording of his quartets, including those two miniatures. 

“Kurtág has an incredible ability to tap into the idea of drama,” Hamao says. “There is a sense of narrative. I don’t think there is an explicit one, but an abstract narrative. He’s able to pack a story into two minutes of music. [He has] this incredible ability to create a lot of expression through quite minimal means.”

Whatever narrative you discover will have to be “in each listener’s imagination,” Hamao says, but that is part of the reward for both performer and listener.

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Parker Quartet

  • Adolphus Hailstork: Adagio from String Quartet No. 1
  • György Kurtág: Aus der Ferne V (From the distance)
  • Alban Berg: Lyric Suite
  • Schumann: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 41 No. 3

4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21
7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 22
Grusin Recital Hall, CU Imig Music Building

In-person and Sunday live stream tickets available from CU Presents

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November 12, 2021

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Longmont Symphony embraces nostalgia in Saturday’s concert

Dvořák’s “New World” and Barber’s Knoxville paired for “American Nostalgia”

By Peter Alexander Nov. 12 at 12:03 a.m.

Conductor Elliot Moore and the Longmont Symphony (LSO) will embrace “American Nostalgia” for their Masterworks Concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Nov. 13) at Vance Brand Civic Auditorium.

The concert will feature one of the most overtly nostalgic works in the orchestral repertoire, Samuel Barber’s warmly reflective Knoxville: Summer of 1915, paired with Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. Tickets for LSO concerts are available here.

All LSO musicians, staff and volunteers have been vaccinated. Audience members eligible for COVID vaccinations must show proof of vaccination or medical exemption to attend the performance, and must wear face masks inside the building.

Elliot Moore

Moore says that he chose the program for Saturday’s concert while reflecting on people’s need to connect to the past in difficult times. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the need for nostalgia,” he says. “There can be feelings that the world is changing so fast, I’ve never seen this before.

“Somebody said to me recently, all that’s keeping me alive right now is looking back. People need a sort of old Americana and that is certainly what I feel through Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915.”

Barber’s score is written for voice and orchestra and will be performed by soprano Leberta Lorál with the LSO. The text is taken from the eloquent prologue to James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. The text is suffused with Agee’s wistful childhood memories of his family, or as Barber wrote, “it expresses a child’s feelings of loneliness, wonder and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”

A home in Knoxville in 1915

But beneath the nostalgic yearning for warm summer nights with the family there is also an undercurrent of foreboding in both text and music. Agee’s prologue takes place shortly before the tragic death of the book’s title, which is briefly referred to in the text and expressed in the music: “God bless my people . . . remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.”

We also know today that World War I was raging in Europe in 1915, and would soon pull Americans into the slaughter. And, Moore reminds us, “one could also say it’s before the Spanish flu”—something we all can relate to today.

Lorál has not sung the Barber before, but says she has loved getting into the score. “I’ve heard it but have never sung it before,” she says. “When I got approached about it, I looked at it and I was hooked on it. I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is right up my alley! I love this!’”

She likes the nostalgia and the sweetness of the text and music, but she also has a personal feeling for the final part of the text, in which Agee reflects on his innocence and incomplete identity as a child. “After a while, I am taken in and put to bed,” he writes. “Those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home . . . but will not ever tell me who I am.”

Leberta Lorál

“That line has really stuck with me,” Lorál says. “I know why it stuck with me. At birth I was adopted. I had a great relationship with my biological parents, and last month my birth mother passed, and I was there to see her.

“I was OK with whatever happened—that’s all good. So that last line, wow! It stuck with me. I took that and went back to the beginning to pull through the piece, all the way to the end.”

Moore wanted another work that reflects America’s past to go with Knoxville: Summer of 1915. “To tie that in with Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony, so that we can all feel something good—that’s important for a lot of people in today’s world, where we’re all facing so much,” he says.

The “New World” harkens back to what many Americans think of as a happier time in our history. Composed in the U.S. and premiered in Carnegie Hall in December 1893, the symphony is thematically linked with our culture. For example, scholars have shown that it was partly inspired by Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” which Dvořák had read in Czech translation.

While in this country, Dvořák also showed great interest in Negro spirituals, which were sung to him by one of his pupils, Harry T. Burleigh. Burleigh’s singing is likely reflected in the slow movement, with its spiritual-like “Goin’ Home” melody. Dvořák himself believed the symphony expressed something about America, and once said he would never have written it “just so” had he not come here.

Moore finds meaning in both the nostalgia of the program, and in sharing it communally. “People need that,” he says. “That’s an experience not only that we can offer, but that we can offer to people all at the same time.

“People need that kind of shared, uplifting experience that we’ve missed.”

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“American Nostalgia”
Longmont Symphony, Elliot Moore, director
With Leberta Lorál, soprano

  • Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
  • Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor (“From the New World”)

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium

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November 5, 2021

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Santa Fe Opera announces 2022 festival season

One world premiere, one company premiere, and three favorites

By Peter Alexander Nov. 5 at 11:40 p.m.

The Santa Fe Opera (SFO) has announced their 65th summer festival season, scheduled for July 1 through Aug. 27, 2022.

Robert Meya announcing the Santa Fe Opera’s 65th season

The festival will feature a world premiere and a company premiere, as well as three operatic favorites. The announcement was made by SFO general director Robert K. Meya on Thursday, Nov. 4. 

Following last year’s reduced season of four productions, the company returns to a full season of five different operas, played in repertoire throughout the summer.

The first of the operatic favorites to be performed in 2022 will be Bizet’s Carmen, opening the season on July 1. That will be followed by Rossini’s Barber of Seville on July 2 and Verdi’s Falstaff on July 16. A co-production with Scottish Opera, Falstaff will be presented in Sir David McVicar’s production, which is set in a wood structure resembling an Elizabethan theater of Shakespeare’s time.

Next in the summer’s rotation will be the company premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. This will be the first piece by Wagner to be presented at the SFO since The Flying Dutchman in 1988, and the only Wagner to be presented other than Dutchman. Some performance start times at the SFO shift over the summer season, due to changing times of sunset, but due to length, all performances of Tristan und Isolde will begin at 8 p.m.

Rounding out the summer season will be SFO’s 18th world premiere, M. Butterfly, based on the 1988 Tony Award-winning play by David Henry Hwang, who is also the librettist, with music by Huang Rao. The play and opera were inspired by the true story of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a star of the Peking Opera without discovering his lover’s remarkable secret. The production of this new work will recall the SFO’s productions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the opera that has opened all three of the company’s theaters, in 1957, 1968 and 1998.

Promotional art for the Santa Fe Opera/Scottish Opera production of Verdi’s Falstaff

Further information and the full calendar of performances are available at the Santa Fe Opera Web page. Both season subscriptions and individual performance tickets are now on sale through that portal, or by calling the box office at 505-986-5900 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday (toll-free 1-800-280-4654). Currently, the SFO plans to require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test for all patrons 12 or older. Full details of the SFO health and safety policies and any updates can be found here.

CORRECTIONS: Typos corrected 11/6.

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November 4, 2021

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Boulder Chorale will sing about ‘A World in Harmony’

Saturday’s concert features both solace and celebration

By Peter Alexander Nov. 4 at 10:54 p.m.

Vicki Burrichter dreams of a world in harmony. But as director of the Boulder Chorale, she not only dreams about it, she works to bring it about, one performance at a time.

The Chorale’s next concert, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 6 and 7 at 4 p.m. in the First United Methodist Church in Boulder, is in fact titled “A World in Harmony: A Ceremony of Solace and Celebration.” An updating of a program originally planned before COVID struck, it will include music of solace and consolation, then transition to music of joy and celebration.

Boulder Chorale from a performance in 2019, pre-COVID

Tickets are available from the Boulder Chorale Web site. Audience members must have proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test for admission, and must wear a mask during the performance. All singers have been vaccinated, and will be wearing resonance masks during the performance.

“This program, with some tweaks and some edits, was the program that we were about to perform when we shut down (during) concert week back in March (2020),” Burrichter says. “The first half is going to be all meditative choral music, mostly a cappella. 

Vicki Burrichter

“I want people to be able to just think, meditate, breathe— whatever they want to do. And it’s not only to honor the 700,000 lost in COVID in this country, but also the victims of the King Sooper’s shooting.”

The concert will open with an instrumental performance of the theme from Schindler’s List, played by pianist Adam Waite and violinist Leena Waite. That will be followed by a setting of the Latin text Lux Aeterna (Eternal light), set to the music of the well known “Nimrod” variation from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a piece often chosen for moments of mourning or meditation.

Also on the first half of the program is “Underneath the Stars,” a piece about parting from friends that was performed by the British a capella vocal group Voces8. “I go a lot by feel when I program,” Burrichter says. “The feeling of this piece—the text is not literally about somebody dying, but the grief of losing somebody is really in the piece. It’s definitely about letting go of somebody that you don’t want to let go of.”

The final two pieces on the first half—“Alleluia” from Brazilian Psalms by Jean Berger and Jorge de Lima, and the “Gloria” from Missa Brevis in Honorem Beatae Mariae Virginis by Lithuanian composer Kristina Vasiliauskaite—were selected to form a transition to the more joyful second half of the concert. ”I really wanted to lift the mood a little bit,” Burrichter says. “I wanted to have these moments of transcendence and joy after the deep grief of the first few pieces.”

“Then for the second half it’s going to be completely different, with the full band and soloists and everything. No one’s really been able to sing in public, and I wanted people to be able to sing with us and sing with the band and have a celebration.”

Christopher Hearns

The first four pieces after intermission will be well known pop songs, all arranged by Waite who has been Burrichter’s first-choice arranger for some time. “He and I are very much on the same page musically,” she says. “He’s really wonderful!”

There will be printed lyrics for the audience, and guest soloist Christopher Hearns will help lead the audience though the Kinks “You Really Got Me,” Earth Wind and Fire’s “September,” Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” Hearns is best known as a gospel singer and is currently lead singer of the Confluence Band and director of music at Jordan Chapel Church in Denver.

“He’s quite an accomplished singer,” Burrichter says. “I’m looking forward to what he can do with the Kinks’ music.”

Following the sing-along, the concert will conclude with three pieces Burrichter selected to impart a message of hope for the audience. The first will be Toto’s “Africa,” which she originally planned to end the concert that was canceled last year. That will be followed by “All of Us” by Craig Hella Johnson, from the composer’s oratorio Considering Matthew Shepherd, and last will be “We are the Ones We Are Waiting For” by Sunny McHale. 

Johnson’s “All of Us” has “a message that is so powerful and really fits the moment,” Burrichter says. “And the last piece is the thing that we sang during our online sessions all this last year. We would end with it just as a reminder that we are still a community, and that we have the power to make change.

“I wanted to end the concert with those kinds of songs that tie into what we did in the Boulder community during COVID. I’m certain it will be a joyful noise!”

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“A World in Harmony: A Ceremony of Solace and Celebration”
Boulder Concert Chorale with Christopher Hearns, guest artist
Vicki Burrichter, conductor

4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 6 and 7
First United Methodist Church, Boulder

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November 1, 2021

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Seicento presents music from a lavish 16th-century wedding

Musical interludes from La Pellegrina were unmatched for splendor

By Peter Alexander Nov. 1 at 3:30 p.m.

It was the wedding of the century.

The marriage of Fernando I de Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with Christina of Lorraine was celebrated in Florence, Italy, in 1589 with all the pomp and splendor of which only the Medici were capable. And they made sure everyone knew it, too.

Fernando I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Christina of Lorraine

One of the grandest events of the month-long celebration was La Pellegrina (The pilgrim woman), a five-act play that was embellished by six elaborate intermedii—musical interludes—with music by by six different composers. Placed before, after, and between the acts of the  play, these interludes featured extravagant sets and costumes and virtuosic music, all designed to demonstrate the wealth and power of the Medici family.

The musical interludes have been recorded but are rarely performed live—and as far as research can tell, never in Boulder until now. Selections from five of the six intermedii will form the next program by Seicento Baroque Ensemble, with performances Friday through Sunday in Boulder, Arvada and Longmont (times and locations below), under the direction of Seicento’s artistic director, Amanda Balestrieri.

Bernardo Buontalenti, costume design for La Pellegrina

For this performance, Seicento will only have 12 singers rather than the usual 25, due to COVID, but this core group will be supplemented by an additional paid singer and a solo octet, plus two violins, two violas da gamba, a theorbo/lute/Baroque guitar player and harpsichord. Proof of vaccination and masks will be required of all audience members. Both in-person and virtual tickets are available through the Seicento Web page.

It would be hard to exaggerate the impact of the wedding celebration, which was more than a year in planning, and especially the intermedii. While La Pellegrina the play made no great impression then or since, the musical interludes were clearly the most brilliant star of the event, which included banquets, balls, and even a mock naval battle. 

For the play and its attendant interludes an entire new theater was constructed, offering the latest in theatrical capabilities. The elaborate settings were designed by Bernardo Buontalenti, who set the standards for late renaissance stage spectacles. Music was commissioned from the best known Italian composers of the time, including the Florentine court composer Luca Marenzio, plus the early pioneers of Baroque opera Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri and Emilio de Cavalieri—names all prominent in music history if not in most listeners’ experience. 

Bernardo Buontalenti, costume design for La Pellegrina

So successful was the theatrical spectacle of La Pellegrina that it became the model in both musical and theatrical style for early Baroque opera, which for many years excelled as a means for courts and kings to display their wealth. The splendor of the intermedii remains unsurpassed by any stage music of the era, and they represent one original source of the entire artform of opera.

Balestrieri chose these pieces specifically for Seicento’s post-Covid return to the stage. Not only is the resumption of live performances a cause for celebration, the year also marks the ensemble’s tenth anniversary season. “I wanted a grand piece of great beauty that is less well-known,” she wrote in a description of the program. “[I wanted the concert] to stand out and offer some relief from the funereal music performances emerging in late pandemic programming.”

In an intriguing coincidence, Seicento’s founding 10 years ago grew from another Colorado premiere, of music written only a few years after La Pellegrina. That performance of the Vespers composed in 1610 by Monteverdi led directly to the current Seicento ensemble.

Balestrieri explains how she arrived at the singers who will perform the music from La Pellegrina. “Our chorus is a volunteer chorus,” she writes. “Many singers decided to wait until the spring to sing with us again because of COVID, either for their own health or their children’s, since some have young children not yet eligible for the vaccine.

“Anticipating this, I hired one additional chorus tenor, making 13 total singers (for) the full chorus, plus eight chorister/soloists to make up the solo octet that will sing everything. A few of the full chorus will join the octet for a few numbers, the full chorus sings about four choruses, and the octet sings the rest of the numbers.”

She decided not to attempt the entire musical score, which runs more than 90 minutes, both because one venue asked Seicento to limit its performance to 60 minutes as a COVID precaution, and also because of limited rehearsal time for the singers. With a total time of about 50 minutes for the music, Balestrieri expects the entire performance to finish in about an hour, with no intermission.

Both the subjects and the social milieu of the intermedii are likely unfamiliar to most modern listeners, but Balestrieri has taken that fact into account. “The intermedii were originally elaborately costumed and staged tableaux representing both mythological stories well-known to the original audience and homage to the royal couple,” she writes in her notes to the performance. 

Bernardo Buontalenti, design for the final scene of La Pellegrina

 “The context will be explained in the program, and the texts and translations should do the rest.”

And so for the Seicento performance, there will be no royal couple. And no elaborate costumes, much less the lavish stage machinery of the original. But much of the splendor resides in the music, and that will be very much present.

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La Pellegrina: “An Italian Intermezzo” 
Music performed at the wedding of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence in 1589
Seicento Baroque Ensemble and guests
Amanda Balestrieri, conductor

7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, First United Methodist Church, Boulder
7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 6, United Methodist Church, 6750 Carr St., Arvada
3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7, Stewart Auditorium, Longmont Museum

In person and virtual tickets available here.