Witches and Lovers Clash in Opera Workshop Dido and Aeneas

 Witches and lovers clash when HSU Opera Workshop presents the lively and tragic love story of Dido and Aeneas in Gist Hall Theatre, Thursday through Sunday March 26-29. 

 Set in the ancient world of myth, Dido (played by Olivia Bright) is the widowed Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas (Alberto Rodriguez) is a legendary Trojan warrior. Dido’s friend Belinda (Jessie Rawson) supports their love but a sorceress (Lorena Tamayo) and her witches plot to drive them apart. 

 “It has dancing as well as drama,” said Elisabeth Harrington, who directs the Workshop and the production. “Even though it’s a tragedy it doesn’t really became sad until the final scene. It has many moments of levity before then.” 

 This relatively short opera (about an hour) is by Henry Purcell, one of England’s greatest composers. Written in the Baroque period, it remains the only English opera before the 20th century that is still performed in the modern repertoire. It is renowned for its stirring overture, its melodic sailors dance and especially for Dido’s final aria, which has been called unsurpassed in all opera for its melancholic beauty.

 Paul Cummings conducts an instrumental ensemble accompanying the 18 singers and dancers. Student Jessie Rawson is choreographer and assistant director. Catherine Brown designed costumes, Calder Johnson and Megan Johnson provide the sets. A song performed by soprano Jessie Rawson and tenor Victor Guerrero will precede the production. 

 HSU Opera Workshop performs Dido and Aeneas in Gist Hall Theatre beginning at the earlier time of 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 26-28, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday March 29. Tickets are $10, $5 seniors and children, $3 HSU students, from the HSU Ticket Office (826-3928) or at the door. Produced by HSU Music Department.

Media: North Coast Journal, Eureka Times Standard Urge, Humboldt State Now.

Dido and Aeneas: The Production

The Cast:
Dido: Olivia Bright
 Aeneas: Alberto Rodriguez
 Belinda: Jessie Rawson
 Second Woman: Cindy Meadows
 Sorceress: Lorena Tamayo
 Spirit: Danielle Murray
 Witches: Meagan Blachly, Stevy Marquez, Danielle Murray, Cora Rickert, Kate Selway
 Ensemble of Courtiers and Sailors: Karen Currier, Victor Guerrero, Sean Laughlin, Joseph Mayer, Chris Moreno, Nur Pratama, Kyle Rispoli, Daniel Szylewicz.

The Orchestra
 Conductor: Paul Cummings
 Violin: Michael Donovan, Hannah Rolf, Madeline Shapiro
 Viola: Noah Dunkley, Greta Goshorn
Cello: Kyle Swanson, Gabrielle Wood
 Bass: Eric Simpson
 Harpsichord: John Chernoff

The Production
Assistant Director and Choreographer: Jessie Rawson
Costume Design: Catherine Brown
Set design and construction: Calder Johnson, Megan Johnson

Dido and Aeneas: Director's Notes and More

Director’s Notes by Elisabeth Harrington

Eighteen singers, accompanied by harpsichordist and string chamber orchestra, will transport audiences to ancient Carthage and a time when gods and witchery toyed with the fate of mortals. The hour-long opera is preceded by a brief historical presentation about the style of Henry Purcell and the mythology surrounding Dido, the legendary Queen of Carthage.

The performances will begin with a curtain warmer entitled "They say 'tis love," with soloists Jessie Rawson (soprano) and Victor Guerrero (tenor), and a small choral ensemble with harpsichord accompaniment. The music is attributed to Henry Purcell, and does indeed evoke his style. The work is referred to as a "dialogue." It features the basic elements of the opera: recitative, aria and choral response (no duets), and tells a brief story about how love causes pain and distress, but all can be forgiven with one "soft look." I think it will be a good introduction to the poetic and musical style that audience members will experience. We don't hear too much early opera these days!  Total production time, with intermission, is 90 minutes.

 More Notes on Purcell and Dido and Aeneas 

“After more than three centuries, Henry Purcell’s (1659-95) sole opera Dido and Aeneas remains a treasure. Considered the greatest operatic achievement of 17th century England and the first great English opera, even though a performance only takes little more than an hour, it is often justified as holding its position as the finest English opera ever written until the 20th century.

 Despite the opera’s mostly forgotten status from 1700 to the 1890’s when it was revived by the Royal College of Music at the Lyceum Theatre in 1895, who could ever forget the haunting aria, Dido’s Lament, “When I am Laid to Rest.”

 One of the first pieces of keyboard music I learned to play was a Purcell ‘Hornpipe’, and I’ve never forgotten this delightful melody with its inverted second part and the austere but perfect counterpoint in this little gem. Although he also borrowed and adapted folk tunes, Purcell was a supreme melodist who created some of the best tunes in English music.

Whatever may be said of [libretist] Nahum Tate’s liberties or weaknesses as his critics have claimed, his artful collaboration with Henry Purcell on this opera, and in particular this most haunting of arias (“Dido’s Lament”) is as successful as any librettist-composer relationship in Classical music.”
—Patrick Hunt

“As well as a corking overture and some great operatic moments... Purcell hits the operatic jackpot in terms of a tune at the moment Dido dies. ‘When I am laid in earth’, is an aria of melancholic beauty perhaps unsurpassed in all opera, let alone those written by English composers. 'Ah Belinda' comes in at a close second as a mournful classic."
--Classic FM

Voice of the Whale with the Lancaster Trio

 A cellist from Sacramento, a flutist from Venezuela and a pianist from Florida walked into a university in Lincoln, Nebraska. The result is the Lancaster Trio, performing a program at HSU that includes a work inspired by whale songs, on Thursday March 26.

 Born in Ukraine, cellist Elizabeth Grunin grew up in Sacramento, and performed there and in the Bay Area. Award-winning pianist Jelena Dukic was born in Serbia, and taught and performed widely in South Florida. A native of Venezuela, flutist Nicaulis Alliey won prizes in Latin America and Europe. They met while pursuing advanced degrees at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and formed the relatively new Lancaster Trio. 

 Their scheduled program at HSU features Vox Balaenae, or “Voice of the Whale” by contemporary American composer George Crumb, who was inspired by the first recordings of humpback whale songs in the late 1960s. Crumb, who won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy, requested that performers wear masks, and be bathed in blue light. 

 The concert begins with the lively and haunting Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano by Bohuslav Martinu. A Czech composer, Martinu fled from the Nazis to America, and wrote this piece influenced by the sounds of the New England countryside. 

 Carl von Weber’s highly melodic Trio also emerged from a bucolic setting, the composer’s summer home outside mid-19th century Dresden in Germany.

The Lancaster Trio performs on Thursday March 26 at 8 p.m. in Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets are $10 general/$5 seniors, children and students, from the HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. This Guest Artist Series concert is produced by the HSU Music Department. 

Media: Mad River Union, North Coast Journal, Humboldt State Now

Lancaster Trio: The Program

Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano H. 300 by B. Martinu 
Poco Allegretto
Adagio Andante-Allegretto Scherzando

Trio in G Minor Op. 63 by C.M. Weber
 Allegro moderato
 Scherzo. Allegro vivace
 Schafers Klage:Andante espressivo
 Finale. Allegro

Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) by G. Crumb 
 Vocalise- Sea Theme
 Archeozoic
 Proterozoic
 Paleozoic
 Mesozoic
 Cenozoic
 Sea Nocturne


Additional Notes

Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano H. 300 by B. Martinu 

"After an arduous departure from Hitler’s Europe, where his music had been blacklisted, Martinů and his wife arrived in New York in 1941. Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony Orchestra had championed his orchestral music since the early 1930s, and he encouraged the disheartened immigrant by commissioning his First Symphony and offering him a summer teaching position at Tanglewood. Martinů never really settled anywhere, but lived briefly in various locations across New England, including Cape Cod.

The three-movement Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano from 1944 is close kin to the Flute Sonata of the following year. A Poco allegretto opening has a genial spirit and infectious motoric rhythms. The following Adagio starts in a quietly reflective mood and then shifts to a more declamatory bardic vein before coming to a peaceful close. After a brief slow introduction, the concluding Andante–Allegretto scherzando launches its main section with a turbulent, running first theme that alternates with a more measured second subject, though energetic bustle predominates throughout.

The Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano meets the expectations of the listener-reader: inexhaustible invention. I would add only that the cello, that most soulful of instruments, lends the Trio a welcome gravitas and warmth."
--Fenwick Smith

Trio in G Minor Op. 63 by C.M. Weber

"On 25 July 1819 Weber completed the Trio for flute, cello and piano in G minor in Hosterwitz, his peaceful summer residence up the Elbe above Dresden. It had its first playthrough in the Spohrs’ house on 21 November, when, he noted in his diary, ‘it went very well, and came off just as I wanted’...

 As always with Weber, the opening movement has a highly personal approach to sonata form. It is melodically rich, with a graceful opening theme and a gentle second subject, a figure in octaves between cello and piano that comes to dominate the entire movement. Though the warm and impassioned development section begins with the second subject, and brings with it yet another new melody in the major key, it is with the opening theme that the movement ends.

The Scherzo has no real trio section, but contrasts a violent, drumming theme in the minor with a graceful major-key flute melody for which Weber might have found room in his next work, Invitation to the Waltz. It is, however, the pounding piano octave theme that concludes the movement.

The thematic richness of the work takes a new form with the Finale, which compresses into its eight opening bars a wide-ranging piano line and its answer in the bass.. The immediate answer is not development of them, but a completely new tune from the flute. This melodic profusion, in all its variety, permeates the movement, and it is in the extremes of contrast that the essence of the whole work lies. Even within a classical framework, Weber’s Romantic imagination is running high."
 from notes by John Warrack © 2005 

Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) by G. Crumb 

"As the environmental movement took hold in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and “save the whales” became more than just a bumper sticker, George Crumb’s groundbreaking Vox Balaenae [1971] provided a distinct musical voice to this cause while creating a richly vivid landscape (or seascape) of sound and texture.

 Crumb puts the contemporary relationship between man and whale on a much broader scale, painting a picture that encapsulates the vast spans of history that predate man’s interaction with the sea and its inhabitants before introducing the inevitable conflict. This chronological musical journey touches upon elements of science, history, religion and existential philosophy, as well various moral and ethical questions.

The players each wear black half-masks throughout the performance of the work. In Crumb’s own words, “by effacing a sense of human projection, [the masks] will symbolize the powerful, impersonal faces of nature,” while the oft-used blue lighting enhances the figurative immersion into the sea. Although inspired by recordings of humpback whale song, Crumb bypasses the use of tape and instead calls upon the three musicians to produce sounds naturally aided by amplification and extended technique, allowing for a remarkable scope of range in dynamics, color and emotion."
--Musiac

The Lancaster Trio: Biographies

Elizabeth Grunin cello

Elizabeth Grunin was born in Ukraine where she began taking cello lessons at a special music school. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was six years old and settled in Sacramento, California. From that point on, Elizabeth became an active member of the Sacramento and Bay Area musical communities. She has performed with symphonies including Camellia Symphony, San Francisco Youth Symphony, Merced Symphony, UC Davis Symphony, and the North Bay Opera orchestra.

 Miss Grunin also performed regular solo recitals in Sacramento. She has participated in many chamber music festivals such as Mendocino Music Festival, Youth Music International Oxford, England, CSU Summer Arts Fresno, and the Zephyr Chamber Music Festival in Courmauyer, Italy.

 Elizabeth is a founding member of the Lancaster Trio along with Jelena Dukic and Nicaulis Alliey. Miss Grunin holds a Bachelors and Masters of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where she studied in the studio of Jennifer Culp. Elizabeth teaches regularly at Navarro River String Camp in Santa Rosa, CA and she holds a faculty positions at Union College and Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is also a member of the Lincoln Symphony. Currently, Miss Grunin is working on her doctoral degree in the studio of Dr.Karen Becker at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Jelena Dukic piano
Born in Novi Sad, Serbia, Jelena Dukic, received her Bachelor of Music Degree at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia in the studio of Professor Vladimir Ogarkov and her Master of Music Degree from Florida International University in the studio of Professor Kemal Gekic.

 She has been the winner of several competitions and awards including: the Glen Korff School of Music Concerto Competition 2013, the Florida International University Concerto Competition 2009, the Concorsi internazionali di musica-Citta di Stressa, Italy, the International Competition of Pianists "Nikolai Rubinstein", Paris, France, and the award of the County Council of Vojvodina Republic of Serbia. In 2010, Miss Dukic became a member of The Golden Key International Honor Society.

 Jelena has performed with FIU Symphony Orchestra under conductor Huifang Chen. She has also participated in ensembles such as UNL University Choral, the Wind Ensembles, the New Music Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra at Florida International University and at other venues in the South Florida. Miss Dukic has recently joined the Music Teacher National Association. Jelena is a founding member of the Lancaster trio. Currently, she is working on her Doctorate of Musical Arts in the Glen Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the studio of Dr. Paul Barnes.

 Nicaulis Alliey flute 
First Prize of the Ville de París –Unanimous- in 1994, and First Prize at the Latin American Flute Competition (Caracas, 2000), Nicaulis Alliey is regularly invited as a soloist, chamber musician and flute teacher by presenters, institutions and festivals, performing in prestigious venues in France, Colombia, Venezuela and the Caribbean Area.

As soloist, Nicaulis has performed with most of the major orchestras in Venezuela, with conductors such as Eduardo Rahn, José Luís Castillo, Arnaud Pairier. Her experiences in chamber music include performances with Armand Simon, Ney Alliey, Marlon Titre, and Luis Quintero. Nicaulis Has been Flute Solo at the Orchestre International de Paris and Assistant Flute at the Orquesta Sinfónica de Lara and and at the Orquesta Sinfónica de Maracaibo.

 Nicaulis’ pedagogical career in flute includes Universidad de Los Andes (Faculty), Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira (Visiting Professor), and at the Music School of the Universidad del Zulia (Faculty), where she was appointed Founder Director (2005-2009). She has also been featured teacher at “El Sistema”, Venezuelan youth orchestras. Her work was recognized in 2011 with the Rafael Rincon Gonzalez Award, offered by the Universidad del Zulia. 

Nicaulis Alliey holds a Maitrise en Musique at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne (1995), Etudes Superieures de Flute (1994) in Flute with M. Raymond Guiot at Hector Berlioz Conservatory (Paris), and the Degree of Profesor Ejecutante at the Escuela de Musica Jose Reyna, in Caracas. She currently attends the DMA program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she has been granted a Graduate Teaching Assistantship and a Hixson-Lied Fellowship.