Rachmaninoff's "Monna Vanna"

Synopsis

The Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck was tremendously popular in the early years of the 20th century. The French composer Claude Debussy wrote a successful opera based on Maeterlinck’s play “Pelleas and Melisande,” and the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff had his heart set on turning Maeterlinck’s “Monna Vanna” into an opera as well.

Unfortunately, Rachmaninoff began work on “Monna Vanna” in 1906 before he had secured the rights to do so. In fact, Rachmaninoff had already finished one act of his opera by 1907 when he learned that Maeterlinck had already granted the rights to another composer. Rachmaninoff was crushed.

Although he stopped work on his opera, years later when he sat down at the piano to play for friends, he would sometimes include melodies from his abandoned opera.

One of those who heard Rachmaninoff play in this fashion was the much younger Russian conductor Igor Buketoff, who said he was too embarrassed at the time to ask the great Rachmaninoff to identify this unfamiliar music.

Decades later Buketoff was startled to recognize those same tunes as he looked over Rachmaninoff’s unfinished piano score for “Monna Vanna,” which had ended up at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

Buketoff orchestrated the surviving portions of Rachmaninoff’s opera for its premiere, which occurred on today’s date in 1984, at annual summertime music festival in Saratoga Springs, New York—some 75 years after the music was composed.

Music Played in Today's Program

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943) arr. Igor Buketoff Monna Vanna soloists; Iceland Symphony; Igor Buketoff, cond. Chandos 8987

On This Day

Births

• 1900 - Soviet composer Alexander Mossolov, in Kiev (Julian date: July 29);

• 1929 - Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott, in Bargoed (Wales);

Deaths

• 1949 - Austrian composer Karl Weigl, age 68, in New York City;

Premieres

• 1943 - R. Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 2, at the Salzburg Festival by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm, with Gottfried von Freiburg, the principal horn of the orchestra, as soloist;

• 1955 - Bernstein: "On the Waterfront" Symphonic Suite, at Tanglewood by the Boston Symphony conducted by the composer;

• 1955 - Avery Claflin: madrigal "A Lament for April 15" (to an IRS text describing how to file an income tax return), at the Berkshire Center in Tanglewood, Mass.;

• 1957 - Hindemith: opera, "The Harmony of the World," in Munich, with the composer conducting;

• 1968 - Milhaud: "Music for New Orleans" at the Aspen Festival in Colorado; This work was commissioned originally to celebrate the 250th anniversary of New Orleans in 1966, but was rejected by the anniversary committee as unfit for the occasion;

• 1984 - Rachmaninoff: opera "Monna Vanna" (Act 1 only, orchestrated by Buketoff), posthumously, as a concert performance in Saratoga, N.Y.; Rachmaninoff left this work unfinished in 1907;

• 1985 - Han Werner Henze realization of Monteverdi's opera "Il ritorno d'Ulisse" (The Return of Ulysses) at the Salzburg Festival;

• 2003 - Judith Weir: "The Voice of Desire" for voice and piano, at an afternoon BBC Proms concert at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, with mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and pianist Julius Drake;

• 2003 - O'Connor: Violin Concerto No. 6 ("Old Brass"), at an evening BBC Proms concert at Royal Albert Hall in London, with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Kenneth Sillito and the composer as soloist;

Others

• 1922 - Founding of the International Society for Contemporary Music in after a Festival of Contemporary Music in Salzburg, Austria (with the Society's central office to be located in London).