Educator Guides to the Operas

Plan an opera study unit for your students based on one of the operas in the
2010-11 Metropolitan Opera season, climaxing with a Night at the Opera in a local movie theater or at your school. The Met Live in HD series offers free opera-specific educational guides you can use to prepare students for viewing the opera performance, including classroom activities, story synopsis, background on the opera and composer, musical highlights with audio clips, post-opera activities, and more.

Note to Teachers: Have your kids write a paragraph on their “Night at the Opera,” and we’ll share some on our blog or website.

Opera in the Classroom Program

 The Metropolitan Opera has partnered with some school districts around the country to bring their HD Live opera productions into schools. Please check to see if your school district participates, as this brings opera free to students. If your school is not participating, contact the Met to see how you can bring the program to your school.

The fifth season of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series is coming to a movie theater near you! Enjoy front row seats at these live opening night productions. It is so easy to feel more engaged with opera on a large screen, where you can see everything “up close and personal.”  Feel the pre-performance tension as the audience gathers before the conductor appears and the orchestra begins the overture. Then enjoy backstage interviews with the stars during intermission, or take a refreshment break yourself, get a popcorn refill, and mingle with other opera-g0ers in the theater lobby.  What an exciting night of music and drama is in store for you with each performance. And the price of the theater ticket is usually only $15 to $20.  Check the link for the theaters where you can see opening night or Encore performances (subject to change, so verify with your local theater):

Movie Theaters where you can see the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series (listed by state/city, last updated 8/25/2010)

If you miss the simulcast live opening night Metropolitan Opera performances at a theater near you, you can catch the Encore screenings at other movie theaters. These are the Movie Theaters where you can see the Metropolitan Opera Encore performances (listed by state, city).

Educator Guides to the Operas

Plan an opera study unit for your students based on one of the operas in the 2010-11 Met season, climaxing with a Night at the Opera in a local movie theater. The Met Live in HD series offers free opera-specific educational guides you can use to prepare students for viewing the opera performance, including classroom activities, story synopsis, background on the opera and composer, musical highlights with audio clips, post-opera activities, and more.

Note to Teachers: Have your kids write a paragraph on their “Night at the Opera,” and we’ll share some on our blog or website.

Opera in the Classroom Program

 The Metropolitan Opera has also partnered with school districts around the country to bring their HD Live opera productions into schools. Please check to see if your school district participates, as this brings opera free to students in certain districts. If your school is not participating, contact the Met to see how you can bring the program to your school.

METROPOLITAN OPERA: Live in HD in Movie Theaters

                                2010-11 Schedule

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Wagner’s Das Rheingold

October 9, 2010 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours

Two unparalleled artists join forces to create a groundbreaking new Ring for the Met: Maestro James Levine and director Robert Lepage. The cycle launches with Das Rheingold, the prologue to Wagner’s epic drama. “The Ring is not just a story or a series of operas, it’s a cosmos,” says Lepage, who brings cutting-edge technology and his own visionary imagination to the world’s greatest theatrical journey. Bryn Terfel sings the leading role of Wotan for the first time with the company, heading an extraordinary cast.

James Levine; Wendy Bryn Harmer, Stephanie Blythe, Patricia Bardon, Richard Croft, Gerhard Siegel, Bryn Terfel, Eric Owens, Franz-Josef Selig, Hans-Peter König

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Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov

October 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 5 hours

René Pape takes on one of the greatest bass roles in a new production by Stephen Wadsworth. Valery Gergiev conducts Mussorgsky’s epic spectacle that captures the suffering and ambition of a nation, with Aleksandrs Antonenko, Vladimir Ognovenko, and Ekaterina Semenchuk leading the huge cast.

Valery Gergiev; Ekaterina Semenchuk, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Oleg Balashov, Evgeny Nikitin, René Pape, Mikhail Petrenko, Vladimir Ognovenko

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Donizetti’s Don Pasquale

November 13, 2010 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes

Anna Netrebko revives her sensational turn in this sophisticated bel canto comedy, opposite Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, and John Del Carlo in the title role. Music Director James Levine conducts. When Otto Schenk’s production premiered in 2006, the New York Times called it “brilliant” and “wonderful.”

James Levine; Anna Netrebko, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, John Del Carlo

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Verdi’s Don Carlo

December 11, 2010 at 12:30 pm ET
Expected Running time: 4 hours, 30 minutes

Director Nicholas Hytner makes his Met debut with this new production of Verdi’s profound, beautiful, and most ambitious opera. Roberto Alagna leads the cast, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, and Simon Keenlyside also star. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, back after his triumphant debut leading Carmen, conducts. “I think Don Carlo is the quintessential Verdi opera,” Hytner says. “Right through this opera there is, on the one hand, an implacable expression of impending doom and, on the other hand, a succession of the most gloriously open-throated arias, the most fantastically determined music.”

Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Marina Poplavskaya, Anna Smirnova, Roberto Alagna, Simon Keenlyside, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Eric Halfvarson

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Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West

January 8, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes

Puccini’s wild-west opera had its world premiere in 1910 at the Met. Now, on the occasion of its centennial, all-American diva Deborah Voigt sings the title role of the “girl of the golden west,” starring opposite Marcello Giordani. Nicola Luisotti conducts.

Nicola Luisotti; Deborah Voigt, Marcello Giordani, Lucio Gallo

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Adams’s Nixon in China

February 12, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 4 hours

“All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology,” says composer John Adams, who conducts the Met premiere of his most famous opera. “The meeting of Nixon and Mao is a mythological moment in world history, particularly American history.” Acclaimed director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars makes his Met debut with this groundbreaking 1987 work, an exploration of the human truths beyond the headlines surrounding President Nixon’s 1972 encounter with Communist China. Baritone James Maddalena stars in the title role.

John Adams; Kathleen Kim, Janis Kelly, Robert Brubaker, Russell Braun, James Maddalena, Richard Paul Fink

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Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride

February 26, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo reprise their starring roles in Gluck’s nuanced and elegant interpretation of this primal Greek myth. Tenor Paul Groves also returns to Stephen Wadsworth’s insightful production, first seen in 2007. Patrick Summers conducts.

Patrick Summers; Susan Graham, Plácido Domingo, Paul Groves, Gordon Hawkins

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Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor

March 19, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 4 hours

Natalie Dessay triumphed as the fragile heroine of Donizetti’s masterpiece on Opening Night of the 2007–08 season in Mary Zimmerman’s hit production. Now she returns to the role of the innocent young woman driven to madness, opposite Joseph Calleja, who sings her lover Edgardo.

Patrick Summers; Natalie Dessay, Joseph Calleja, Ludovic Tézier, Kwangchul Youn

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Rossini’s Le Comte Ory

April 9, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours

Rossini’s vocally dazzling comedy stars bel canto sensation Juan Diego Flórez in the title role of this Met premiere production. He vies with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, in the trouser role of Isolier, for the love of the lonely Countess Adèle, sung by soprano Diana Damrau. Bartlett Sher, director of the Met’s hit productions of The Barber of Seville and The Tales of Hoffmann, describes the world of the opera as, “a place where love is dangerous. People get hurt. That can be very funny and very painful. Rossini captures both—with the most beautiful love music Rossini ever wrote.”

Maurizio Benini; Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Susanne Resmark, Juan Diego Flórez, Stéphane Degout, Michele Pertusi

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Strauss’s Capriccio

April 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours

On Opening Night of the 2008–09 season, Renée Fleming dazzled audiences when she sang the final scene of Strauss’s wise and worldly meditation on art and life. Now she performs the entire work, in which the composer explores the essence of opera itself. Joseph Kaiser and Sarah Connolly also star, and Andrew Davis conducts.

Andrew Davis; Renée Fleming, Sarah Connolly, Joseph Kaiser, Russell Braun, Morten Frank Larsen, Peter Rose

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Verdi’s Il Trovatore

April 30, 2011 at 1:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 3 hours

David McVicar’s stirring production of Verdi’s intense drama premiered in the 2008–09 season. James Levine leads this revival, starring four extraordinary singers—Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky—in what might be the composer’s most melodically rich score.

James Levine; Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky

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Wagner’s Die Walküre

May 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm ET
Expected Running time: 5 hours, 15 minutes

A stellar cast comes together for this second installment of Robert Lepage’s new production of the Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Bryn Terfel is Wotan, lord of the Gods. Deborah Voigt adds the part of Brünnhilde to her extensive Wagnerian repertoire at the Met. Jonas Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek star as the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, and Stephanie Blythe is Fricka.

James Levine; Deborah Voigt, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel, Hans-Peter König

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Don’t Forget to Support Live Music Events in Your Community!

Even though the Met is coming to your neighborhood theater, don’t fail to subscribe to and support your local opera, symphony, ballet, theater, and other performing groups. The experience of attending live musical events is not replaceable by screened performances. The Live in HD series is a boon for those who have no live opera in their communities, but for those who do have local opera companies the Met series should enrich and not replace your live opera-going experiences. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PERFORMANCE COMPANIES, whether in music, dance, or theater, or you may one day find yourself without them. The Met series will hopefully attract a new and bigger audience, who will also become active supporters of their local musical companies.

Bring full-scale Metropolitan Opera productions into your classroom! The free Live in HD school program from the Met is now available in some school districts around the country, and online educational guides put the icing on the cake.  Teaching guides for each Metropolitan opera production include classroom activities, musical highlights, story synopses, accompanying audio clips, post-opera discussion and activities, and student resources—all practical tools to help students prepare for and understand the operas, and to engage fully in their shared opera experience. What an intelligent way for the Met to build future audiences for opera, and we applaud their wonderful program of making opera more widely accessible throughout the country.  Let’s hope this free school program will continue to expand to all schools. Please let the Met know how you feel, and to encourage expansion of this excellent program. Bravo! Encore!

Note to teachers: In case the Metropolitan Opera program is not currently available in your school district, consider taking your class during the coming school year to one of the Live in HD performances in local movie theaters near you. What a treat it is to view these performances, “up close and personal” on the big screen, with all the excitement and anticipation of being at the Met, in front row orchestra seats!

Educational Guides are available for these operas:

Armida

This mythical story of a sorceress who enthralls men in her island prison has inspired operatic settings by a multitude of composers. Renée Fleming stars in the title role of Rossini’s version, opposite no fewer than six tenors. Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman returns to direct this new production of a work she describes as “a buried treasure, a box of jewels.”  The fanciful and magical tale, Zimmerman says, “has an epic, enchanted quality and a tremendous visual element.”

Doctor Atomic

Gerald Finley stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams’s contemporary masterpiece exploring a momentous episode of modern history: the creation of the atomic bomb.  Directed by Penny Woolcook.

La Bohème

A magnificent cast comes together for Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic production of the Puccini favorite. The exciting young conductor Nicola Luisotti presides over a glorious vocal ensemble led by the mesmerizing Angela Gheorghiu, who sings Mimì at the Met for the first time in twelve years, opposite golden-toned tenor Ramón Vargas as her lover, Rodolfo.

Carmen

One of the most popular operas of all time, Carmen "is about sex, violence, and racism—and its corollary: freedom," says Olivier Award-winning director Richard Eyre about his new production of Bizet’s drama. "It is one of the inalienably great works of art. It’s sexy, in every sense. And I think it should be shocking." El?na Garan?a sings the seductive gypsy of the title for the first time at the Met, opposite Roberto Alagna as the obsessed Don José.

La Cenerentola

El?na Garan?a stars in Rossini’s bel canto Cinderella story, with Lawrence Brownlee as her Prince Charming. Veteran baritone Alessandro Corbelli demonstrates his impeccable comic timing to match the gravitas of Met favorite John Relyea.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (South Pacific) directs this new production, returning after the triumph of his Met Barber of Seville. Offenbach’s fictionalized take on the life and loves of the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann is a fascinating psychological journey. Met Music Director James Levine conducts Joseph Calleja in the tour-de-force title role. Anna Netrebko is the tragic Antonia and Alan Held sings the demonic four villains.

La Fille du Régiment

Experience the “exceedingly yummy operatic cake” that was called “the operatic show of the season” by The Times of London when it opened at Covent Garden this past winter. Audiences were dazzled by Natalie Dessay’s fearless coloratura and impeccable comic timing and by Juan Diego Flórez’s remarkable musicality—complete with the famous high Cs.

Hansel and Gretel

Haunting, charming, and a little wicked, the Met’s production returns as the season’s special holiday presentation for families. Miah Persson and Angelika Kirchschlager are the lost siblings. Philip Langridge reprises his outlandish portrayal of the Witch in Humperdinck’s take on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Sung in English and conducted by Fabio Luisi.

This production was originally created for Welsh National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Lucia di Lammermoor

Anna Netrebko sings the title role of Donizetti’s fragile heroine for the first time at the Met, with tenor Rolando Vilazón as her lover in Mary Zimmerman’s hit production.

Macbeth

Explore this terrorizing classic featuring Željko Lucic and Maria Guleghina as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the new production premiere based on Shakespeare’s original play.

Madama Butterfly

The riveting singing actress Cristina Gallardo-Domâs returns to the title role of Anthony Minghella’s stunning production, a new classic of the Met repertory.

Manon Lescaut

Finnish phenomenon Karita Mattila adds another landmark role to her Met repertory, the free-spirited beauty Manon Lescaut. The story of the magnetic attraction between two young lovers is the perfect vehicle for the soprano’s exhilarating charisma, especially when matched by the ardent tenor of Marcello Giordani.

Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes is under investigation for unthinkable transgressions, yet Benjamin Britten’s probing exploration of the nature of guilt and judgment implicates an entire fishing village. Director John Doyle, a Tony Award® winner for his interpretation of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, makes his Met debut answering the challenges of this modern masterpiece.

Roméo et Juliette

The Metropolitan Opera pairs two of the world’s leading singers, Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna, to bring Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers to thrilling and heartbreaking life.

La Rondine

Opera’s charismatic real-life duo, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, provides the star power to deliver this ravishing romance from the world’s most popular opera composer. Nicolas Joël directs the new production of this gorgeously melodic look at love.

Tosca

Tosca tells the story of three people—a famous opera singer, a free-thinking painter, and a sadistic chief of police—caught in a net of love and politics. Soprano Karita Mattila, recently seen in last season’s Live in HD presentation of Salome, sings the title role for the first time outside her native Finland. Luc Bondy, acclaimed for his imaginative theater and opera productions, directs. The cast also includes Marcelo Álvarez as Cavaradossi and George Gagnidze as Scarpia. Joseph Colaneri conducts.

Turandot

Director Franco Zeffirelli’s breathtaking production of Puccini’s last opera is a favorite of the Met repertoire. Maria Guleghina plays the ruthless Chinese princess of the title, whose hatred of men is so strong that she has all suitors who can’t solve her riddles beheaded. Marcello Giordani sings Calàf, the unknown prince who eventually wins her love and whose solos include the famous “Nessun dorma.”

Can’t go to the opera? Does your busy schedule or a pinched pocketbook or an illness make you miss the magic of the live performance? While there is nothing like the excitement of being in the theater for the real event, there are now 2 wonderful and affordable alternatives:

Option 1. Opera Night at the Movies with Popcorn

Enjoy Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series or the European Opera & Ballet Cinema series of simulcast performances in local movie theaters near you. Witness opening night live performances or catch the scheduled re-broadcasts, for slightly more than the price of a normal movie ticket.

Option 2. Opera Night in Your Pajamas

Bring opera into your living room or bedroom with the Met Player you can download to your computer. Rent or subscribe to the player, but first enjoy a free 7-day trial.  Oh brave new world. . .that hath such lush, magnificent (and affordable) operas at our fingertips.

The Lion’s Face, a new opera on the effects of ageing and memory loss, premieres in Brighton, England May 20, 2010, then tours the UK for the summer.  The music is by Elena Langer, and the lyrics by Glyn Maxwell. The creation of the opera involved an intense collaboration with scientists and doctors at the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. This scientific, poetic, and musical project has resulted in a sensitive and accurate portrayal of dementia, expressing the gradual memory loss and its effects on all the characters: the patient, his wife, the care-giver, the care-giver’s daughter, and the doctor.  The only unsung role is the patient’s (played by acclaimed actor Dave Hill), whose spoken dialogue poignantly suggests his gradual loss of communication and language, and the gulf that separates him from the world around him.  This is the synopsis from The Lion’s Face website:

When a man loses his way home it seems a trivial thing, but one which signals an irreversible return to childhood. Compassionate, heartfelt, strikingly dramatic and often witty, this is an original and richly-textured take on ageing, memory and the incomprehension of getting old in the minds of the young.

Learn more about The Lion’s Face from the composer, librettist, and scientists in this short video:

See more details on the opera, cast, and schedule of performances in the UK.

Let’s hope The Lion’s Face eventually crosses the Atlantic, so we can experience this groundbreaking opera in the US.

This took a little research to find, but thought that opera and ballet fans in the  Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex would find this theater schedule handy for upcoming productions from major opera/ballet companies around the world. How exciting is this! Gather up your friends or your music class and plan a night at the opera, Texas style (i.e., with popcorn).

http://www.harkinstheatres.com/operaBallet.aspx

Enjoy front row seats at the latest operatic productions from Milan’s La Scala and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, as well as from other European venues, all in the comfort of your local movie theater.  Join opening night audiences throughout the world to experience these outstanding operas in digital HD.  Oh brave new world that has such wonders in it. . .and for only $25 per ticket. 

Opera in Cinema LIVE! broadcasts for the rest of the season:

April 21, 2010

Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio)

Live in HD from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona
Conducted by Ivor Bolton, directed by Christof Loy, starring Diana Damrau

April 29, 2010

Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra

Live in HD from Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Conducted by Daniel Barenboim, directed by Federico Tiezzi,
starring Plácido Domingo, Ferruccio Furlanetto

May 26, 2010

Wagner’s Das Rheingold

Live in HD from Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Conducted by Daniel Barenboim , directed by Guy Cassiers
starring René Pape

July 1, 2010

Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades

Live in HD from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona
Conducted by Michael Boder, directed by Gilbert Deflo, starring Ben Heppner

In addition to the LIVE broadcasts from La Scala and the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the new season will also include LIVE HD recordings from the Salzburg Festival, Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and more. Check www.operaincinema.com for the complete upcoming program and to locate a theater near you.

TEACHING TIP:  And for more opera in movie theaters, see The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series that also brings live operas from the Met to cinema theaters across the world. Teachers, don’t miss this opportunity to introduce students to opera, and avail yourself of the excellent music education resources on opera education, synopses, etc. that the Met offers.

Born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France
Died  April 27, 1992 in Clichy, France

“I give bird-songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.” —Olivier Messiaen

The Musician who Loved Birds

Olivier Messiaen was perhaps the most influential French composer since Debussy. He redefined avant-garde, although his highly original works often reflect conservative values of spirituality, nature, and  beauty that set his music apart from the harsher trends of the 20th century. While others “musicalized” the harsh mechanized sounds of urban life, war, and the industrial age, Messiaen preferred nature, and most of all, birds.  As a passionate ornithologist, he painstakingly transcribed birdsongs, particularly the songbirds of France. Birds were the true musicians, he felt, and their songs were transformed exquisitely in his music, as seen in Catalogue de Oiseaux (1958).

Messiaen enjoyed a happy childhood filled with music and poetry. At age 10 after discovering Debussy he declared his intention to become a composer.  His mother penned a long colorful poem to him before he was born, and the synaesthesia which caused the composer to experience sounds as colors (as did fellow composers Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin) he attributed to her. “When I hear music, I hear colors,” he said. “When I compose, I see the colors as I see the sounds.” He described one of his harmonic sequences as changing “from blue striped with green to black spotted with red and gold, by way of diamond, emerald, purplish-blue, with a dominant pool of orange studded with milky white.” (Once he got a stomach ache at a ballet when the violet lighting clashed with his color conception of the Key of G!) His father,  a teacher of English, translated Shakespeare into French. As a child, Messiaen delighted in adapting Shakespeare plays for family productions.  Considering that Shakespeare wrote more about birds than any other poet,  is it any wonder that birds would sing in  Messiaen’s music more than in any other composer’s?

Messiaen underwent a rigorous classical musical education at the Paris Conservatoire (1919-30), studying with Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor, and Marcel Dupré.  His education came full circle when he taught there from 1941-78, instructing such influential musicians as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Iannis Xenakis. The most profound influence in his life was his strict Roman Catholicism, which he expressed strongly in his music and in his 61-year tenure as organist of Eglise de la Trinité in Paris. [It was at La Trinité where I was privileged to hear Messiaen at the organ during the annual memorial service Nadia Boulanger held for her sister Lily Boulanger; this venerable neo-gothic church was at my metro stop during my junior year in Paris, near Mlle. Boulanger’s home in nearby Montmartre where I was privileged to attend her weekly music analysis classes.]  

Messiaen’s deep spiritual faith was akin to Bach’s. Both felt that the essential goal of music was to glorify God. “I want to write music that is an act of faith, a music that is about everything without ceasing to be about God,” declared Messiaen. When his faith was tested during his 2-year captivity in a German POW camp, he composed his most important work Quartet for the End of Time (1941). Written for piano, clarinet, violin and cello–the only 4 instruments available to him in the prison camp, this intensely mystical work had a profound effect on 5000 fellow prisoners in the camp, where it was performed for the first time.

Messiaen’s compositional innovations included the use of Greek meters, Hindu rhythms, rhythmic palindromes, adventurous harmonies, and a vivid use of color in his orchestrations through unusual percussion such as the ondes martenot (a vacuum tube instrument that was successor to the spooky theremin). He  also briefly experimented with electronic music (Fête des belles eaux, 1937) and serialism (Quatre études de rythme, 1949). His legacy includes  works for organ, piano, voice, orchestra, and an almost 6-hour-long opera (Saint Francois d’Assise, 1975-1983).  He was in ill health when he finally completed what he thought would be his final work,  but how fitting is it that St. Francis is the subject of his only opera. (Hear St. Francis’s ecstatic sermon to the birds, Act II, Scene 6). In this gentle saint Messiaen found someone who quietly worshipped God and passionately loved nature and birds as much as himself.

Biographers Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone reflect on Messiaen’s techniques of transcribing and composing with birdsongs:

Here’s a good children’s book on Messiaen:

Music for the End of Time

by Jen Bryant, illus. by Beth Peck

“In my hour of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility. . .what is left for me but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest. . .among the birds.” -Messiaen

This poetic children’s biography  reveals the small miracle of how French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time. Imprisoned in a German POW camp, Olivier longs for his family, friends, and home. . .but most of all he misses music. A chance encounter with a nightingale and a German officer, however, provides him with the opportunity to write music again. When a make-shift concert on broken-down instruments takes place in the camp in 1941, Quartet for the End of Time (and the song of the nightingale which is in it) offers a message of hope and beauty that inspires Messiaen’s 5000 fellow prisoners.

"A superb singer is really a highly trained athlete. You must stay in training.”  - Grace

Grace Bumbry

See Grace Bumbry receive a  Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award, in the 2009 awards ceremony airing Dec. 29 on CBS at 9 p.m (ET/PT).

Grace Bumbry enjoyed a remarkable operatic career as one of the world’s finest mezzo sopranos.  Following her spectacularly successful Paris Opera debut in Aida (1960) she shot to international stardom and a long, successful career.  Breaking barriers amid controversy as the first black singer at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in 1961, her performance as Venus in Tannhauser stunned her critics with an unprecedented 42 stage calls.  A long career followed, with starring roles at the major opera houses of the world. As a performer, she eventually stretched herself and her voice to tackle high soprano roles as well as mezzo, returning again later in her career to mezzo roles. She proved that “a superb singer is really a highly trained athlete. You must stay in training.” As a recitalist, recording artist, and teacher, she continued her lifelong affair with music long after she left the operatic stage.

She grew up singing in church choir, and as a student at Northwestern University she studied with the Wagnerian singer  Lotte Lehmann. "Lehmann did not teach voice," she says. "She taught interpretation of opera and lieder" — one reason Bumbry focused on the recital literature, as well as opera roles, throughout her career” (Washington Post).

Grace Bumbry was also enriched by her love and heritage of spirituals, which she grew up singing with her family in the church choir. She founded the Grace Bumbry Black Musical Heritage Vocal Ensemble, a choir devoted to preserving and performing traditional Negro spirituals and gospel on the concert stage. ‘The spiritual, for me, is the American classic, as Brahms and Beethoven are European classic," said Bumbry in a New York Times interview.

Grace Bumbry In Concert DVD Hear the lush, velvety voice of Grace Bumbry singing arias from French and Italian operas in this 1991 live concert at the Lugano Festival in Switzerland. Subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. 92 min. DVD with bonus audio interview. Available from Music in Motion. 5210  $19.95  order now

Grace Bumbry plays a seductive Carmen in this video clip:

Where the Wild Things opera has finally been released in DVD, just as the popular Spike Jonze movie version hits the theaters. Oliver Knussen’s fantasy opera, produced by the Glyndebourne Opera (1985), with libretto and designs by Maurice Sendak, is a captivating musical experience for kids. Sendak’s quirky children’s book has become a  classic since its publication in 1963, and this charming opera is destined to become a musical classic too. (In a humorous postscript, Sendak in an interview said he patterned the monsters after his relatives!)

Also on the DVD is Knussen’s children’s opera Higglety Pigglety Pop! based on Sendak’s story of the same name. See the video preview.

Where the Wild Things Are/Higglety Pigglety Pop! DVD is now available at Music in Motion.

Teaching tip: Discuss with students their reactions to these 3 versions of Where the Wild Things Are: the book, the movie, and the opera. What are the differences in how a story is told in these three artistic mediums:

1. through written words and illustrations in a book
2.  through a live-action movie
3. through music in a staged opera

What strengths and weaknesses does each art form possess in conveying the story? Do you react with different emotions to each? Which of the three forms stirs your imagination the most? How does music help tell the story? Do you enjoy and remember better the music of the film or the opera?