Picker picks a plot

Synopsis

Ever wonder how composers choose a story for an opera? Here’s one answer, courtesy of the American composer Tobias Picker:

“My sister was dusting her bookshelf in 1998, and a copy of Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin fell off. She picked it up, read it and then recommended it to me for my next opera.”

And so it came about, some three years later, that on today’s date in 2001, that the Dallas Opera premiered a new opera entitled Thérèse Raquin, with music by Tobias Picker.

Zola’s novel is a rather clinical examination of adultery, murder, and a double suicide. “The novel,” said Picker, “exudes ‘opera’ from every page. Everything about it is operatic.” In Picker’s musical setting, traditional harmonies spiral off into atonality, just as the ordered world of the opera’s characters gradually falls apart.

Picker has written successfully in both styles, so combining the two in his new opera was a natural process. “That tension has always been there in my music,” says Picker.

“I think the opera made some people uncomfortable,” said Picker following the Dallas premiere. “There’s so much negative wish fulfillment and guilt. It affected people strongly and in different ways. One woman came up to me at the third and final Dallas performance and said: ‘I just love this. It’s the third time I’ve seen it.’ Perhaps she had experienced the same catharsis that I had when I composed it!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Tobias Picker (b. 1954) Therese Raquin Dallas Opera Orchestra; Graeme Jenkins, cond. Chandos 9659

On This Day

Births

• 1796 - German composer Carl Loewe, near Halle;

• 1813 - French composer and pianist Charles-Henri-Valentin Alkan (née Morhange), in Paris;

• 1861 - Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille, in Bozen, the Tyrol;

• 1884 - Swedish composer Ture Rangström, in Stockholm;

• 1895 - Russian composer and pianist Sergei Liapunov (Lyapunov), in Yaroslavl (see Julian date: Nov. 18);

Deaths

• 1623 - English composer Thomas Weelkes, age ca. 48, in London;

• 1954 - German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler, age 68, near Baden-Baden;

Premieres

• 1877 - Tchaikovsky: “Variations on a Rococo Theme” for Cello and Orchestra, in Moscow, with Nicolai Rubinstein conducting, and Wilhelm Fitzenhagen as the soloist (see Julian date: Nov. 18);

• 1885 - Massenet: "Le Cid," in Paris;

• 1913 - Rachmaninov: choral symphonic poem, “The Bells,” in St. Petersburg, composer conducting (Gregorian date: Dec. 13);

• 1930 - Ibert: "Divertissement," in Paris;

• 1934 - Berg: "Five Symphonic Pieces" from "Lulu," at the State Opera, Berlin;

• 1945 - Martinu: Symphony No. 4, in Philadelphia;

• 1963 - Shulamit Ran: "Capriccio" for piano and orchestra, with the teenage composer as soloist, on a New York Philharmonic "Young People's Concert" conducted by Leonard Bernstein; In 1991, Ran would win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her “Symphony” commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra;

• 1989 - John Harbison: "November 19, 1928" for piano quartet, in Atlanta, Ga., by the Atlanta Chamber Players;

• 2000 - Corigliano: Symphony No. 2, by the Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conducting; This symphony is a reworking of Corigliano’s String Quartet of 1995, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2001;

• 2001 - Philip Glass: "Dancissimo" for violin and orchestra, with Robert McDuffie and the Milwaukee Symphony conducted by Andrea Delfs;

• 2001 - Tobias Picker: opera “Thérèse Raquin,” by the Dallas Opera;

Others

• 1903 - The old Brooklyn Academy of Music facility (at 176-194 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights) burns to the ground (See Nov. 14, 1908 for gala reopening).