In the intimate Newmark Theatre.

love isn’t always easy

Leonard Bernstein whisks us back to the 1950s for a lively look at marriage. Amid a seemingly idyllic suburban backdrop, this marriage has had both ups and downs. And there is much to learn—and feel—as these two people try to find their way.

Like his West Side Story and Candide, Bernstein speaks straight to our hearts in this one-act masterpiece, with music that is lively, jazzy, and uniquely American.

Sung in English with lyrics projected above the stage.

Two One-Act Monteverdi Works Round Out This Exciting Program!

IL BALLO DELLE INGRATE

(The Dance of the Ungrateful Women)

IL COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA
(The Battle of Tancredi & Clorinda)

Sung in Italian with English translations projected above the stage.

Performance time is approximately 2:05, including one intermission.

Audio description performance is Sunday, March 28.

Download the study guide here.
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Cast

With Third Angle New Music Ensemble.

One-act opera in seven scenes. Time and Place—1950s, suburban America.

ACT I — A trio of jazz vocalists advertises the charms of ideal family life in 1950s Suburbia, U.S.A. In their little house Sam and Dinah quarrel at breakfast. After ten years of marriage they wish they could be kind to each other, but there is no real communication between them. In his office Sam clinches a deal and makes a loan with his customary élan.
The trio extols his business acumen and big heart. On her psychiatrist’s couch Dinah relates a dream: as she struggled
to find her way out of a crying garden, a voice beckoned to her, promising that love would lead her to a quiet place. The couple avoids each other at lunch, reminiscing about the beautiful garden of peace and life where they met. The trio sings a vivid interlude about suburban life. Sam goes to the gym rather than attend his son’s school play, commenting on his own will and desire to succeed. Dinah excitedly describes the escapist musical Trouble in Tahiti, belying her outward suggestion that the movie was awful. Sam and Dinah return home, while the trio sings commentary. The couple argues again briefly before Sam wearily suggests a movie—some new musical about Tahiti. Dinah winces, then agrees, and they both depart to seek out the artificial magic of the silver screen.

–Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Tahiti’s Troubled Waters

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” —Leonard Bernstein

When he wrote Trouble in Tahiti, Bernstein certainly had a plan—he wanted to write a completely American opera without any of the falsity he perceived in the art form, with the down to earth language recognized by every American. He may also have had an axe to grind: a Freudian exploration of his parents marriage; a gloomy forecast of the waters his own marriage would sail; or a bitingly taut satirical work skewering American materialism and the “feminine mystique” Friedan would write about 10 years later. Whatever his plan, when he wrote the opera, he certainly had too little time.

In 1951, Bernstein was busy. His conducting schedule was intense and included a fundraising tour for the Israel Philharmonic. His mentor and colleague Koussevitzky was in failing health, and the older maestro was desperate to ensure that his work at Tanglewood would continue, even in the event that sickness interfered with his ability to teach. Bernstein had resolved to stop conducting for a time to focus on composing, and had moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico to write Trouble in Tahiti. Koussevitzky’s ill health called him back to Boston, where he was able to see his mentor briefly before he died. The responsibility for Tanglewood then fell to Bernstein, and, in keeping with the nurturing his own talent had received, Bernstein set himself to the administrative and conducting tasks that Koussevitzky had left undone.

In addition to his artistic responsibilities, Bernstein married actress Felicia Montealegre in the summer of 1951. As the Tanglewood festival concluded, Bernstein and his new bride headed back to Cuernavaca for their honeymoon, and Bernstein returned to Trouble in Tahiti. Again he was interrupted in his writing, having to return to Boston to replace Charles Munch at the Boston Philharmonic. His time at the podium in Boston left him no break before his visiting professorship at the recently formed Brandeis University began. Trouble in Tahiti, which was to premiere at the Festival of Creative Arts at Brandeis (June 1952), remained unfinished. Distractions in Boston made completing the score and libretto (which he was writing himself) difficult so he adjourned to an artists’ colony in upstate New York. At its opening, the opera did not fare well. The finale of a long festival evening, the one act did not begin until 11:00 pm, leaving the audience (what was left of it), exhausted. The ill-prepared cast and hissing and popping speakers left them annoyed. Chagrined, Bernstein rewrote the ending and presented it later that summer at Tanglewood with greater success. In November, Bernstein conducted a live telecast of his first opera.

Trouble in Tahiti ushered in a very prolific period of Bernstein’s stage works. Soon after Trouble in Tahiti came Wonderful Town, Candide and West Side Story. That Trouble in Tahiti had deep personal significance for Bernstein seems clear, as he revisited his characters 30 years later in his sequel, A Quiet Place (1983), which embeds the earlier work within the structure of the latter. Trouble in Tahiti is a work of great wit, which straddles the border of opera and musical theater.

—Alexis Hamilton

Monteverdi’s Miracles

Claudio Monteverdi was the first of the great opera composers and created operas of terrific emotional punch at the birth of this great genre. One might wonder how he could master such magnificent characterizations in music, when the concept of dramatic storytelling in music was so new. In reality, Monteverdi had been practicing writing opera throughout his entire career, had he only known it. He was invariably concerned with storytelling and dramatic impact in all of his music. In many of his madrigals, Monteverdi experimented with the “new music” of his day, sometimes including detailed performance notes, complete with gestures and facial expressions. His madrigals are vivid, intricate aural postcards of human passions, almost operatic in scope if not construction or size, and amazingly affecting given their short durations. Monteverdi began stretching the ideas of what a madrigal was, until some of his work was no longer recognizable as madrigal. His first opera, L’Orfeo, was written in 1607. Il ballo delle ingrate, or The Dance of the Ungrateful Women, was written in 1608 for the wedding of the Duke of Mantua, to a text by Ottavio Rinuccini vaguely reminiscent of the eighth story on the fifth day in Boccaccio’s The Decameron. More than a madrigal as we think of it, it is a combination of song and dance with a strong narrative thread.

The show opens with Amor, or Cupid, complaining to his mother, Venus, that his arrows no longer work as they once did—in fact, there are those who refuse to respond to the gift of love. Amor then asks Pluto to release from the underworld some of the proud, cruel women who rebuffed love when it was offered, that they might serve as a warning to the living. As the miserable women enter, two by two, Venus and Amor sing of their misery and lament the loss of the happier fate they might have lived had they been less cruel—or less beautiful. After dancing in the sun slowly and sadly one last time, the ungrateful lovers are once again consigned to the dark depths of the underworld. They sob out their regret and the agony of returning to the loveless depths with a warning to all women to learn pity and unharden their hearts to love before they fade away into the dark.

The first performance of Ballo on June 4, 1608 was energetically chronicled by Federico Follino, who describes a heart-wrenching performance of great beauty, with an impressive set and extraordinary costumes.

Another of Monteverdi’s remarkable achievements of dramatic music is a 20-minute scena, entitled Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. The magnificent use of the orchestra to paint the action of the story was quite new in 1624 when it was first performed. Up until this point, much word painting was done with the voice—medieval and Renaissance singers had sophisticated protocols of ornamentation to create aural representations of words. This kind of use of the orchestra illustrates anything from the galloping of horses to the crash of swords. In Combattimento, Monteverdi indicates the first pizzicato* (for which he included helpful instructions) and, perhaps more importantly, the first use of the tremolo** in the strings. It is nearly unthinkable to play the classical violin without a tremolo today, but at the time, the concept was so revolutionary that Monteverdi had to teach his players to do it and met stiff resistance to his new technique. It was not fully adopted by composers and musicians until the 18th century.

In Combattimento, a narrator tells us the story of a devastating clash of wills between Tancredi, knight of the Crusades, and the Saracen champion. It is not until the end of the cataclysmic battle that the Saracen knight, begging for salvation in baptism, is revealed as the beautiful and chaste Clorinda. At the end, Tancredi offers her salvation and as he opens her visor to offer her baptism he recognizes her. As she accepts the baptism and the holy words are whispered, she breathes, “Heaven opens; I go in peace…”

—Alexis Hamilton

* Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument.
** Tremolo is a technique that involves using the bow to create a rapid repitition of a single tone.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

“How did I know he was going to become Leonard Bernstein?” —Samuel Bernstein, Leonard’s father   Samuel Bernstein never wanted his son to be a musician. A Russian Jewish immigrant who escaped the pogroms and literally worked his way up from penniless young man to an American success story with a good business to leave his son, Samuel Bernstein wanted more for his child than to become what he thought of as a wastrel klezmer. But Leonard was to grow into a cornerstone of American music, a conductor, composer and educator who introduced a generation of Americans to art music. Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts on August 25, 1918. He made his conducting debut while attending Harvard University and in 1942, began his long association with Tanglewood. Bernstein became an overnight success in 1943 when he stepped in for an indisposed Bruno Walter and conducted a critically acclaimed radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic. From then on, Bernstein was a star. As a conductor, he was instantly recognizable through his affiliations with the New York City Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, Tanglewood, Brandeis, New York Philharmonic, Harvard and the Vienna Philharmonic. Despite his busy conducting and teaching schedule, Bernstein composed a variety of works, including Trouble in Tahiti (1952), Candide (1956), West Side Story (1957) and two more symphonies. His music is a skillful amalgamation of musical styles, incorporating jazz, dance rhythms, pop ballads and magnificent symphonic passages reminiscent of Mahler and Beethoven. Despite his popularity, or perhaps because of it, he struggled for many years with the musical establishment because his music was accessible and listenable, which, at the time, implied that it was not “artistic” or “serious.” One of the reasons Bernstein is universally recognized as the first American musician to really achieve worldwide status as a conductor, composer, pianist, author and teacher was his affiliation with CBS. This fruitful partnership began in 1954, when he conducted Beethoven’s 5th for CBS’ "Omnibus." He then helped develop and teach the "Young People’s Concerts," which aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972. The Young People’s Concerts were many Americans’ introduction into the world of classical music. His accomplishments with CBS brought Bernstein to the attention of Leo Kirch, who headed Unitel, a corporation that produced and distributed films for television and movie houses. Bernstein partnered with Unitel in 1971 and helped create 120 hours of programming, including his final production with Unitel on December 25, 1989, when he conducted Beethoven’s 9th Symphony from the fallen Berlin Wall. This concert was telecast live to more than 20 countries, reaching over 100 million viewers. Having received so much support and inspiration from his mentors, Bernstein was dedicated to nurturing young musicians and so sought to develop programs to educate and inspire up and coming music makers. In addition to his teaching at Tanglewood, he established the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. Three months after its inauguration, Bernstein died on October 14, 1990. He was mourned by a world to which he had presented “serious” music in an accessible and unique way, and he destroyed the artificial barriers and assumptions about classical music which had intimidated lay audiences. His greatest legacy is creating relevance for classical music in the minds of many Americans and teaching them that music is for everyone and that it matters.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.” —Claudio Monteverdi   Throughout his 60-year career, Claudio Monteverdi straddled the line between two musical worlds, the Renaissance and the Baroque, ushering in the first “modern music,” as Leo Schrade calls it. Monteverdi was born in 1567. His first published work appeared when he was only 15. By the time he was in his early 20s, he had published five volumes of music. Little is known of his childhood before this time. What can be traced is the development of his music into two distinctive trends: Prima practica refers to polyphony, the use of multiple voices, all of equal importance singing vocal lines at the same time. This was the Renaissance practice, and many of the vivid madrigals Monteverdi wrote fall into this category. Seconda practica music is characterized by solo voice or voices over an accompaniment. This thinning of the texture allowed for a wider range of expression for the voice and text. His eight books of madrigals show this progressive experimentation, which lead ultimately to his operas. In 1590, Monteverdi accepted a post from Duke Vincenzo of the Gonzaga Court, in Mantua. He was hired as a string player and one of many composers responsible for the stream of new music required to mark matters of the court. In June of 1595, he attended the Duke on military campaign in Hungary. The Duke was dismissed from service during a third campaign in 1600. After his dismissal, the Duke began to sponsor lavish fetes, resulting in Monteverdi’s first opera. In the meantime, Monteverdi had taken a wife, court singer Claudia Cattaneo, in 1599. In 1601, the court’s chorus master died, and Monteverdi made short work of securing the post for himself. He was responsible for all secular music in Mantua. For the next six years, Monteverdi continued to explore the possibilities of his seconda practica. By 1604, one of his letters describes the first known instance of his writing for the stage. It appears he was preparing, unconsciously, to write an opera. Music in Florence had been developing apace. In 1598, Peri’s Dafne was performed, and its libretto suggests the use of a rudimentary recitative style as well as strophic passages for chorus and soloists. Peri’s second opera Euridice appeared in 1600. It is unknown whether Monteverdi saw either of Peri’s works, but the Duke’s son Francesco certainly knew of them and commissioned a similar work from Monteverdi. Monteverdi’s Orfeo was performed at court on February 24, 1607. Orfeo went well beyond Peri’s operas, enhancing its emotional impact with an extraordinary degree of sophistication. Paralleling the fortunes of his mythic hero, Orfeo, Monteverdi lost his beloved wife a mere six months later. Within weeks, however, he was recalled to Mantua to compose music for Francesco’s wedding. The resulting opera, Arianna, was performed to an audience of 5,000. Despite the success of his works for Francesco, Monteverdi was summarily dismissed upon the death of his father, the Duke. Venice was a cultural hub, attracting audiences from all over Europe. Venice allowed Monteverdi to be on the “ground floor” of opera as a commercial venture, rather than simply a court entertainment. In 1637, Venice opened the world’s first public opera house. Sixty years later Venice had 15 more and had produced 358 operas for the public. Monteverdi wrote no fewer than 19 theatrical works. His influence on opera—and indeed, on music in general—is impossible to exaggerate. Monteverdi first recognized the full potential of the musical innovations of his time, and his concern for the humanity of his subjects allow his operas to transcend time and distance.

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