Heggie Writes a Choral Opera

Synopsis

In Costa Mesa, California, on today’s date in 2014, the Pacific Chorale premiered a new choral opera. And what exactly is a choral opera you ask? Good question — and one that puzzled Jake Heggie as well, since he was the composer commissioned for that occasion.

He and his librettist Gene Sheer at first scratched their heads. As Heggie put it, “Operas require action, characters, conflicts, journeys, transformation movement. Choirs stand still and make beautiful sound.”

They came up with a unique solution involving one character, Nora, a silent, on-stage actress, whose inner thoughts are sung by half of the choir. The other half expresses the sounds and surroundings of the outside world she chooses to hear on a day in her life on which everything seems to go wrong — starting with a returned, unopened, handwritten letter she had sent, pouring out her heart, to her jerk of a boyfriend. Even her apartment furniture gets in a word or two about her unhappy state. And where does she turn for comfort? Why, to the radio of course — hence the title of the new choral opera: The Radio Hour.

Spoiler alert: the opera ends on a hopeful note for poor Nora.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jake Heggie (b. 1961): The Radio Hour; John Alexander Singers; Pacific Symphony members; John Alexander, conductor; Delos 3484

On This Day

Births

• 1830 - Austro-Hungarian composer Karl Goldmark, in Keszthely, Hungary

• 1901 - French composer Henri Sauguet, in Bordeaux

Deaths

• 1733 - German composer and organist Georg Böhm, 71, in Lüneburg

• 1909 - Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, 48, in Cambo-les-Bains

• 1910 - French composer and opera singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, 88, in Paris

• 1911 - Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, 50, in Vienna

• 1975 - American composer Leroy Anderson, 66, in Woodburg, Connecticut

Premieres

• 1885 - Bruckner: String Quintet (final version), in Vienna, by the Hellmesberger Quartet with guest violist. 24 years earlier, Joseph Hellmesberger had asked Bruckner to write a quartet for his ensemble. A partial performance of this work (minus the Finale, and with its original Scherzo replaced by an Intermezzo movement) was arranged in Vienna on November 27, 1881, by Bruckner's pupil Franz Schalk.

• 1887 - Chabrier: Le Roi Malgre Lui (The King in Spite of Himself), in Paris at the Opera Comique

• 1897 - Dukas: tone-poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in Paris, with the composer conducting

• 1917 - Satie: ballet Parade, in Paris by the Ballet Russe

• 1922 - Stravinsky: opera, Renard, at the Paris Opéra, with Ernest Anseremet conducting

• 1939 - Douglas Moore: opera The Devil and Daniel Webster, in New York City

• 1940 - Luigi Dallapiccola: opera Volo di Notte (Night Flight), after the novel by Antoine Saint-Exupéry), in Florence

• 1949 - Milhaud: Sabbath Morning Service at Temple Emanu-El, in San Francisco, composer conducting

• 1950 - Lukas Foss: opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (after the short story by Mark Twain) in Bloomington, Indiana

• 1978 - Cowell: Quartet Romantic for two flutes, violin and viola, at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, by Paul Dunkel and Susan Palma (flutes), Ralph Schulte (violin) and John Graham (viola). This music was composed in 1917.

• 1981 - Joan Tower: Sequoia in New York, with the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies

• 1988 - Philip Glass: opera The Fall of the House of Usher (after Poe) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the American Repertory Theater

• 1990 - John Harbison: Viola Concerto, in Bridgewater, New Jersey, with soloist Jaime Laredo and the New Jersey Symphony, Hugh Wolff conducting

• 1996 - Philip Glass: opera Les Enfants Terrible (Children of the Game) based on the novel by Jean Cocteau), by the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Theatre Casino in Zug (Switzerland), Karen Kamensek conducting