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Lyric Fest's "Shakespeare: A Biography in Music
Tom Purdom
How to set Shakespeare to music?
Let us count the ways
TOM PURDOM
Lyric Fest’s musical biography of William Shakespeare crowded a full two-hour program with songs, narration, opera scenes, and acted excerpts from the plays. The result was one of the most informative musical events I’ve attended.
The program developed three main themes.
Shakespeare as a timeless musical wordsmith. In a program devoted to Shakespearean songs, you’d expect to hear a lot of music composed in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Instead, 15 of the 27 numbers were attributed to composers whose lives touched the 20th Century, with most of the rest from the 19th.
The afternoon opened with a big dramatic soprano setting of Under the Greenwood Tree, created by the German émigré Erich Korngold, who became an A-list Hollywood composer in the 1930s and produced works like the score for Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood. The American works included a rage aria setting of Blow, blow thou winter wind, by Frank Bridge (1879-1941); a soprano When Icicles Hang by the Wall, by Dominick Argento (born 1927) and a classic tenor-aria version of Caliban’s Be not afeard speech from The Tempest, composed by Lee Hoiby (born 1926).
Shakespeare as an international success. Shakespeare possesses a notable ability to penetrate linguistic borders— a particularly difficult trick when a writer happens to be a poet. The foreign language offerings started with the third item on the program, a muscular setting of The rain it raineth every day, composed by Jan Sibelius and sung in Finnish. A Russian version of Sonnet 76, by Dmitry Borisovich Kabelevsky (1904-1987), transformed lines like “Why is my verse so barren of new pride” into a soulful Russian love song.
Franz Schubert contributed a fine setting of An Sylvia, and Richard Strauss turned Ophelia’s description of her father’s funeral, Sie triegenihn auf der Bahre bloss, into a somber lament. Scenes from Verdi’s operas Otello, Falstaff and Macbetto captured the Italian side of Shakespeare’s output. Gounod’s Ah! Leve-toi, soleil and O Nuit divine, from Romeo et Juliette, sampled the poet’s French incarnation.
Shakespeare’s biography. I’ve read books about Shakespeare’s life and times ever since I started reading the plays when I was in the fifth grade, but I still picked up new bits here. This is the first time I’ve heard that much of our knowledge of the Bard’s life comes from the reports turned in by Queen Elizabeth’s domestic spies.
The linkage
The lengthy narration delivered by different cast members connected the music and the biography with a string of apt touches. A description of London as it must have looked to a new arrival preceded a buoyant setting of the vendor’s cries from The Winter’s Tale, composed by Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964). The description of Shakespeare’s death was followed by the complete text of Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, set to a simple, stately melody composed by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956).
The players
The spoken excerpts from the plays and poems were handled by Jim Bergwall, a veteran of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival who proved he can play both sides of the dialogue between Desdemona and her jealous husband. The three musicians at the core of Lyric Fest are a trio with an infectious enthusiasm for the art song repertoire— soprano Randi Marrazzo, mezzo-soprano Suzanne DuPlantis, and a gifted accompanist, pianist Laura Ward— who deserve extra applause for the research and organization they invested in this project. For this program they were joined by another veteran, mezzo Jody Kidwell, and five younger vocalists.
The younger singers all had bios loaded with impressive credits and critical comments, and all lived up to their publicity. Kiera Duffy and Laquita Mitchell are both winning sopranos. Markus Beam and Mark Moliterno brought a proper baritonely authority to their assignments, and Bryan Hymel soared and banked like a good tenor should..
A historic first
The vocalist who most deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Musical Records was Markus Beam. At the end of an aria expressing Hamlet's response to the sight of his father's ghost-- at the very moment when we were all poised to give him his well deserved applause-- Beam immediately, without a pause, joined Jim Bergwall in Shakespeare's dialogue between Hamlet and the ghost. Has any soloist, in all the history of music, ever passed up a round of applause so he can play a scene from Hamlet?
Let us count the ways
TOM PURDOM
Lyric Fest’s musical biography of William Shakespeare crowded a full two-hour program with songs, narration, opera scenes, and acted excerpts from the plays. The result was one of the most informative musical events I’ve attended.
The program developed three main themes.
Shakespeare as a timeless musical wordsmith. In a program devoted to Shakespearean songs, you’d expect to hear a lot of music composed in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Instead, 15 of the 27 numbers were attributed to composers whose lives touched the 20th Century, with most of the rest from the 19th.
The afternoon opened with a big dramatic soprano setting of Under the Greenwood Tree, created by the German émigré Erich Korngold, who became an A-list Hollywood composer in the 1930s and produced works like the score for Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood. The American works included a rage aria setting of Blow, blow thou winter wind, by Frank Bridge (1879-1941); a soprano When Icicles Hang by the Wall, by Dominick Argento (born 1927) and a classic tenor-aria version of Caliban’s Be not afeard speech from The Tempest, composed by Lee Hoiby (born 1926).
Shakespeare as an international success. Shakespeare possesses a notable ability to penetrate linguistic borders— a particularly difficult trick when a writer happens to be a poet. The foreign language offerings started with the third item on the program, a muscular setting of The rain it raineth every day, composed by Jan Sibelius and sung in Finnish. A Russian version of Sonnet 76, by Dmitry Borisovich Kabelevsky (1904-1987), transformed lines like “Why is my verse so barren of new pride” into a soulful Russian love song.
Franz Schubert contributed a fine setting of An Sylvia, and Richard Strauss turned Ophelia’s description of her father’s funeral, Sie triegenihn auf der Bahre bloss, into a somber lament. Scenes from Verdi’s operas Otello, Falstaff and Macbetto captured the Italian side of Shakespeare’s output. Gounod’s Ah! Leve-toi, soleil and O Nuit divine, from Romeo et Juliette, sampled the poet’s French incarnation.
Shakespeare’s biography. I’ve read books about Shakespeare’s life and times ever since I started reading the plays when I was in the fifth grade, but I still picked up new bits here. This is the first time I’ve heard that much of our knowledge of the Bard’s life comes from the reports turned in by Queen Elizabeth’s domestic spies.
The linkage
The lengthy narration delivered by different cast members connected the music and the biography with a string of apt touches. A description of London as it must have looked to a new arrival preceded a buoyant setting of the vendor’s cries from The Winter’s Tale, composed by Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964). The description of Shakespeare’s death was followed by the complete text of Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, set to a simple, stately melody composed by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956).
The players
The spoken excerpts from the plays and poems were handled by Jim Bergwall, a veteran of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival who proved he can play both sides of the dialogue between Desdemona and her jealous husband. The three musicians at the core of Lyric Fest are a trio with an infectious enthusiasm for the art song repertoire— soprano Randi Marrazzo, mezzo-soprano Suzanne DuPlantis, and a gifted accompanist, pianist Laura Ward— who deserve extra applause for the research and organization they invested in this project. For this program they were joined by another veteran, mezzo Jody Kidwell, and five younger vocalists.
The younger singers all had bios loaded with impressive credits and critical comments, and all lived up to their publicity. Kiera Duffy and Laquita Mitchell are both winning sopranos. Markus Beam and Mark Moliterno brought a proper baritonely authority to their assignments, and Bryan Hymel soared and banked like a good tenor should..
A historic first
The vocalist who most deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Musical Records was Markus Beam. At the end of an aria expressing Hamlet's response to the sight of his father's ghost-- at the very moment when we were all poised to give him his well deserved applause-- Beam immediately, without a pause, joined Jim Bergwall in Shakespeare's dialogue between Hamlet and the ghost. Has any soloist, in all the history of music, ever passed up a round of applause so he can play a scene from Hamlet?
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