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He organized “the greatest Wagnerian concert of all time!” Last summer, an all-Wagnerian program included excerpts from the 19th-century German composer’s famous opera and featured arias from a pair of guest singers.
It’s an intriguing concept — sure to please some of Wagner’s fans in the Bay Area — and Thomas Conlin, the internationally renowned Grammy-winning conductor behind the concert, has decided to host another of the famous composer’s catalogues. Themed presentation, this time Tchaikovsky and titled it “Tchaikovsky’s Star-Fated Lover.”
Featuring excerpts from the operas of Russian composer “Eugene Onegin” and a pair of orchestral works, “Romeo and Juliet, Fantastic Overture” and “Francesa da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy After Dante Song,” an all-Tchaikovsky concert, with Conlin leading the Vallejo Festival Orchestra, Saturday night at the Empress Theater in Vallejo at 7:30 pm.
In addition to the full orchestra, the concert will feature a pair of opera stars, soprano Sarah Tucker and baritone Michael Adams, with support from the Vallejo Arts Center.
Conlin, a Washington, D.C. native and Napa resident, said in response to a series of emailed questions earlier this week: “We’ll probably have more single-composer shows. I personally like that format, it’s something like A format that many art museums find very attractive: a Renoir retrospective, a Picasso mid-cycle, etc.”
He called Tchaikovsky, the composer of “Swan Lake,” “The Nutcracker” and the “1812 Overture,” “the most popular Russian composer of all time.” Harmony and colorful orchestration, “all of which evoke a deep emotional response.”
Short for Onegin, indeed, is a 145-year-old chestnut known for a score with penetrating psychology, emotional impact and natural dialogue.
Adapted from the poetic novel of the same name by the Russian poet Pushkin, it tells the story of a heartless, ruthless man in a big city who is dissatisfied with a young woman Tatiana in a bourgeois rural setting.
It is best known for its first act “Letter Scene,” in which she writes a long love letter to Onegin, a stranger she has just met, and Tucker will take the spotlight to perform one of the opera’s classic arias as the music becomes lyrical and reflection.
Other scenes, says Conlin, include another meeting between the two, “where she is appalled by his rejection and accusations of her immaturity. In the final scene, Onegin returns, expressing to her love him and ask her forgiveness.” But Tatiana was married and told him she would not betray her husband.
Throughout, Tchaikovsky proves time and again – as he does in almost all of his compositions – that he is a master of orchestration and melody, the hummable part of the song, if not the other key to the music Elements: rhythm, timbre, harmony and structure.
Tucker’s resume includes performances in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas, Philadelphia, North Carolina, Virginia and Utah, symphonies in Dallas, Richmond, Lexington, Dayton and Las Colinas the Crystal Cathedral in Orange, California, and the Lincoln Center City Ballet in New York.
Conlin pointed to her San Diego Opera debut last season as Fiordiligi in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” and she was described by Opera News as an “outstanding character” with “impeccable tone and diction.” Tucker was also a semifinalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Commission audition.
Opera News praised Adams for “wielding a beautiful, even, mature voice,” said Conlin, who has conducted opera companies and symphony orchestras in 15 countries and 28 U.S. states.
Adams, who starred in Seattle Opera’s “Eugene Onegin,” returned to his native Texas last season to perform Sharpless in “Madama Butterfly” with the Dallas Opera and with Austin Singer. The Count in “The Marriage of Figaro” in theater collaboration. He has recently performed with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Utah Opera, Liceu Theater, Geneva Opera, Omaha Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Knoxville Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival. He is the 2018 winner of the William Matthews Sullivan Music Foundation and first prize winner of the 2015 Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition, among other prestigious awards.
The musical setting of Tchaikovsky’s Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Francesca Darimini, taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, fit well with the theme of star-fated lovers, “Because of these things, Like Onegin’s ending, it ended tragically,” said Conlin, who received a doctorate in humanities from West Virginia Wesleyan University and a doctorate in music from the University of Charleston.
“Francesca da Rimini” in E minor, about 25 minutes long, is the composer’s response to the story of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, who lost their souls in hell due to adultery. The music starts out dark, becomes agitated and grim, but develops a serene love theme midway through. Unsurprisingly, the torrent of sound at the beginning comes and goes with 10 powerful chords, a bit creepy.
In “Romeo and Juliet,” in B minor, about 20 minutes long, the music ranges from sweet expressions suggesting longing love between young lovers to frenzied sounds in rapid succession, musical images depicting gang violence and conflict. Between the Capulets and the Montagues.
While the arts are not necessarily separate from our current national and global affairs, interestingly Conlin said that while Tchaikovsky was born in Russia, his paternal family came from Ukraine, so his Ukrainian ancestry was neither for the Soviet Union nor for the Soviet Union. Celebrated, not known. By today’s Russians. On April 2, 2022, Russian missiles hit the city of Kremenchuk, the birthplace of Tchaikovsky’s great-grandfather Fedor Chaika, a Cossack who, along with the composer’s many ancestors, fought with Russia and others seeking to control Ukraine Territorial Empire Warfare, he added.
Still, Conlin said, “coincidentally with the current situation in Ukraine, I would like to point out that while he is undoubtedly a quintessentially Russian composer, Tchaikovsky’s ancestors were Ukrainian. I am definitely not trying to post a political Statement, because I firmly believe that art is above politics.”
His resume shows that he is a frequent guest conductor of opera and ballet companies and symphony orchestras on five continents, most recently in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Russia , Spain, Turkey and the entire United States.
Grammy?
Conlin conducts the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra for the recording of George Crumb’s “Star-Child,” which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and is a complete version of the American composer’s work part, which ClassicsToday.com calls “one of the most influential” major recording projects currently underway, and one of the most artistically successful. “
Additionally, Conlin, a student at Johns Hopkins University, performed Mozart’s opera “Lucio Silla” in Baltimore in 1968, marking the first ever use of projected translation or subtitles, although others, including a former opera manager Lotfi Mansouri and opera personality and singer Beverly Sears claim to have designed them.
“Nowhere in the world would A season of classical music is unimaginable,” Conlin said. “But Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is today regarded around the world as the quintessentially Russian composer. What would Christmas be in America without the “Nutcracker” ballet that dominates theaters during the holiday season? Who could Imagine Christmas shopping without the “Dance of the Sugar Fairy” or a Fourth of July outdoor concert without the thrilling “1812 Overture”?
if you goVallejo Festival Orchestra “Tchaikovsky’s Star-Crossed Lovers” Saturday 7:30pmEmpress Theater330 Virginia St., VallejoTickets: $29 to $97www.empresstheatre.org(707) 552-2400
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