Congratulations on your successful audition. I’m extremely excited to work with all of you in February! I wanted to post some recordings and notes for your reference as you prepare your music. The more familiar you are with the music the more fun we can have together. Can’t wait to meet all of you and perform the wonderful music by Verdi and Bizet.
I created a Spotify Playlist. Start listening so you are familiar with the music!! Feel free to practice with the recording if it helps you!!
If you would like to subscribe to the playlist so you can listen to it on your app, click HERE
If you are not familiar with Spotify, it’s a free online music streaming program.
It’s a great resource to have, so I highly recommend getting it.
If you have any specific questions about the music, please feel free to send me a message on Facebook. I may not be able to respond to you immediately so please be patient.
See you soon!! Have fun practicing!!
-kei
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Overture to La Forza del destino
La forza del destino (“The Force of Destiny”), a tragic opera set in mid 18th-century Seville, tells the story of the ill-fated love of Don Alvaro and Leonora. Verdi wrote the opera for a commission by the Russian Imperial Theater. The St. Petersburg premiere in 1862 was notoriously unsuccessful, due in part to nationalistic grumbling by a group of Russian musicians angry at the fact that Verdi, a foreigner, was getting paid much better than the local talent. The plot of La forza—replete with several murders, unintentional and otherwise—was also pretty dreary stuff for a Russian audience that expected something lighter and more entertaining from an Italian opera composer. When Verdi revived the opera for the Milanese audience at La Scala a few years later, it was in a thoroughly revised form, and it was resounding success. Among the most substantial revisions was an entirely new overture, which expanded greatly on the outlines of the original prelude.
For Verdi, the overture was an integral part of the drama: setting a comic or tragic tone, exposing important melodies from the body of the opera, and sometimes leading directly into the first scene. Several of Verdi’s overtures have taken on lives of their own as concert pieces, however, and La forza’s overture has remained the most popular of all, testifying to its durability as an independent piece. From the very first measures, there can be no doubt that this is beginning of a tragedy. The overture opens with ominous brass chords, and continues with an agitated melody from the strings. After a restatement of the chords, the upper woodwinds sing a slow, melancholy melody—Don Alvaro’s prayer from Act III. There is a brief lightening of the gloom when the solo clarinet plays Leonora’s aria from Act II, but the mood soon darkens again with a solemn brass chorale. The overture ends with a fiery coda.
Allegro agitato e presto (measure 9) will be conducted in 1
this music flies!!!
Andantino (measure 51 / 1 before rehearsal B) will be conducted in 4.
Andante mosso (measure 68 / rehearsal C) – super soft and super delicate
Presto con prima (measure 83 / rehearsal D) – will be conducted in 1
String players, measure 99 on wards. YEP. You probably need to memorize this section.
There is no time to read the music, you just have to commit to memory.
Andante come prima (measure 122 / rehearsal F) – 2/4 will be conducted in 4 [in 8th notes]
Measure 148 / rehearsal H – in 4
Brass players all “TAKATA–” articulation. Clean and Dry.
No “dagada–”
Measure 168 / rehearsal J
conducted in 2 for three measures, then in 4 for ONE measure
then back to 2 for three measures, in 4 for ONE
This will make perfect sense in rehearsal.
Brass – LOTS OF AIR and yes you have to do the crescendo
Measure 206 / Rehearsal M for some, Rehearsal N for some.
Violins, this is the trickiest section, as you can see.
Commit this to memory too.
Piu animato – Measure 241 / Rehearsal P
FAST… like really fast.
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Suite No.2 from L’Arlésienne
Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne (“The Woman of Arles”) was an attempt to revive the fading tradition of French melodrama (spoken drama above a musical background). In 1872, the manager of the Théatre du Vaudeville in Paris, Leon Carvalho, commissioned Bizet to write music to complement Daudet’s play, and Bizet responded with some 27 pieces. Bizet was a careful musical scene-painter—his Carmen, written just a few years later, is famous for its musical evocation of Spanish melody and rhythms. In L’Arlésienne, the setting is a rustic village in Provence, and Bizet’s incidental music is filled with musical references to Provençal tunes. Daudet’s play was unsuccessful, but critics were enthralled by Bizet’s music. The composer had been frustrated by the restrictions imposed by Carvalho’s budget, especially by the small orchestra available at the theater. When the play closed after only a few performances, Bizet quickly prepared a suite of selected movements that were scored for full orchestra (now known as the Suite No.1). Bizet’s colleague Ernest Guiraud prepared the second suite heard here after the composer’s death.
The Suite No.2 includes four colorfully-orchestrated movements. The opening Pastorale set the scene for Act II of the play: a heavy rustic tune alternating with more gentle music from the woodwinds, and a lively dance episode. The more serious Intermezzo linked two fairly tragic scenes in the play, and has a long middle section that features a romanticized version of a Provençal song. Bizet’s music for L’Arlésienne had included a rustic Menuet, excerpted in Suite No.1, but in this suite, Guiraud—who must have wanted a third-movement Menuet here as well—cheated a bit and included a Menuet from another Bizet work, the 1867 opera La jolie fille de Perth. The pastoral spirit of this menuet, which features a lovely duet for flute and harp and a rougher country dance, fits perfectly with the L’Arlésienne music, however. Near the end, Guiraud included an optional part for the saxophone, still a novelty in 1879. The Farandole is the last movement of the suite. This music, based upon one of the traditional dances of Provence, appears at the climactic moment of the play. In this movement, we hear two contrasting themes: the first a strident march, the Marcho dei Rei (known best to American audiences as The March of the Three Kings), and the second a lighter dance melody based on the Provençal tune Danse dei Chivau-Frus.
Program Notes by J. Michael Allsen