Bard Music Festival: Program Five - Women in Berlioz’s Circle

As Program Five discovers, Pauline Viardot was one of several women to stake a serious claim in the previously all-male province of professional music. Berlioz helped stage La Esmeralda, an opera by fellow Reicha student Louise Bertin, to whom he dedicated the first version of Les nuits d’eté. One of the Romantic era’s most distinguished pianists, Clara Schumann is finally also winning recognition today for her own compositions, including the piano collection Soirées musicales. She was among the attendees of the first performance of Viardot’s Le dernier sorcier. This little-known rarity—a two-act chamber opera set to a French libretto by Ivan Turgenev, the composer’s lover—will be performed in a semi-staged production of Viardot’s original salon arrangement for voices and piano. Also on the program are two Berlioz works for female voice—Le mort d’Ophélie, inspired by Hamlet, and La captive, which Viardot sang in London—together with a Rossini aria made famous by Viardot’s sister, legendary singer Maria Malibran.

Program
2:30 pm • Preconcert Talk with Hilary Porris
3 pm • Performance: Laquita Mitchell, Monica Yunus, and Camille Zamora, sopranos; Rebecca Ringle Kamarei and Adriana Zabala, mezzo-sopranos; Noah Stewart, tenor; Babatunde Akinboboye, baritone; Anna Polonsky and Lucy Tucker Yates, piano; Sharyn Pirtle, director of Le dernier sorcier; and others

Hector Berlioz (1803–69)

Le mort d’Ophélie, Op. 18, No. 2 (1842)

La captive, Op. 12 (1831–32)

Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)

Le dernier sorcier (1869)

Works by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868); Louise Bertin (1805–77); Clara Schumann (1819–96); and others

Location: Sosnoff Theater

Ticketing
Tickets start at $25
$5 tickets for Bard students are made possible by the Passloff Pass.
Livestream: $20; Free for Members; Reservations Required

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