Michael MacLeod, General & Artistic Director
For our first posting, Michael MacLeod provides insight into how the Shakespearean-themed season came to be and how the programming decisions were made.
Following last summer’s Orpheus-inspired season, you may be wondering if we decided to have a Shakespearean season before choosing any of the specific repertoire. The plan for the season actually began with a desire to program Wagner’s early comic opera Das Liebesverbot (inspired by Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure).
The work has an unusual history. It had a disastrous opening. Accounts indicate that it had not been properly rehearsed and that there was fighting between members of the cast just before the second performance (which was attended by all of three people). I believe the reason it failed to “take off” has more to do with its tumultuous debut rather than any inherent weaknesses. It is full of charming music — largely inspired by Bellini and his contemporaries — with echoes of Beethoven and premonitions of the Wagner to come. A number of European houses have mounted productions, and the Wagner Society of New York was party to making the U.S. premiere take place, albeit only in concert, in 1983. Glimmerglass Opera is presenting the first fully-staged performances in America.
So it is around this historic event in American opera that the season was constructed. The task became finding three other works to complement the unknown Wagner offering. If Das Liebesverbot is the beginning of Wagner’s exploration of music and drama, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, drawn from the same Italian story that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is a true vehicle for singers. Handel’s Giulio Cesare, while not directly inspired by Shakespeare, is baroque music at its grandest and includes two of the Bard’s most treasured characters: Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. And what better to complement these three than Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate? Brilliantly poking fun of Shakespeare, this musical inclines toward the world of operetta.
You are in for a treat this summer. All of our productions will be on the stage of an Elizabethan theater evoking Shakespeare’s Globe in London, designed by our Associate Artistic Director John Conklin. And what a setting this will be when the full Glimmerglass Orchestra is on stage at “The Globe” giving two performances of Mendelssohn’s complete Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with linking spoken text from the play.
I hope you enjoy the 2008 season and I look forward to seeing you this summer.
For our first posting, Michael MacLeod provides insight into how the Shakespearean-themed season came to be and how the programming decisions were made.
Following last summer’s Orpheus-inspired season, you may be wondering if we decided to have a Shakespearean season before choosing any of the specific repertoire. The plan for the season actually began with a desire to program Wagner’s early comic opera Das Liebesverbot (inspired by Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure).
The work has an unusual history. It had a disastrous opening. Accounts indicate that it had not been properly rehearsed and that there was fighting between members of the cast just before the second performance (which was attended by all of three people). I believe the reason it failed to “take off” has more to do with its tumultuous debut rather than any inherent weaknesses. It is full of charming music — largely inspired by Bellini and his contemporaries — with echoes of Beethoven and premonitions of the Wagner to come. A number of European houses have mounted productions, and the Wagner Society of New York was party to making the U.S. premiere take place, albeit only in concert, in 1983. Glimmerglass Opera is presenting the first fully-staged performances in America.
So it is around this historic event in American opera that the season was constructed. The task became finding three other works to complement the unknown Wagner offering. If Das Liebesverbot is the beginning of Wagner’s exploration of music and drama, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, drawn from the same Italian story that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is a true vehicle for singers. Handel’s Giulio Cesare, while not directly inspired by Shakespeare, is baroque music at its grandest and includes two of the Bard’s most treasured characters: Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. And what better to complement these three than Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate? Brilliantly poking fun of Shakespeare, this musical inclines toward the world of operetta.
You are in for a treat this summer. All of our productions will be on the stage of an Elizabethan theater evoking Shakespeare’s Globe in London, designed by our Associate Artistic Director John Conklin. And what a setting this will be when the full Glimmerglass Orchestra is on stage at “The Globe” giving two performances of Mendelssohn’s complete Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with linking spoken text from the play.
I hope you enjoy the 2008 season and I look forward to seeing you this summer.
photo credit:
1. Micahel Macleod General & Artistic Director, photo: Claire McAdams
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