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A Note from the Artistic Director
Most great composers through the history of classical music have excelled in numerous genres - orchestral, chamber, choral, sacred, secular, solo, vocal, etc. Before the 19th century this included opera as well, where composers such as Mozart, Handel, Gluck, Monteverdi, Purcell, etc., were equally comfortable writing for the operatic as for the concert stage or for the church.
Beginning in the 19th century, however, a great gulf opened between those who composed opera, and those who did not. Beginning with Rossini, Donizetti, and continuing with Bellini, Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini, by and large the great opera composers specialized exclusively on their chosen genre, and the others - Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Bruckner, etc., do not appear among the ranks of the great opera composers . . . even when sometimes they did write operas, such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, etc.
This concert seeks, briefly at least, to do away with this separation, uniting the great opera composers with their vocal cousins, the choral singers.
Timothy J. Krueger
March 2004
© 2004 Timothy J. Krueger |