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Off with a bang
Monteverdi à la chinoise, a Wagner marathon, and much more
BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Classical-music fans have pretty much had the summer off, apart from the odd jaunt to Tanglewood and the occasional concert courtesy of Longy Shool of Music or the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. So you should be well rested for the fall season. And in case you had any notion that said season would begin with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s gala opening on October 2 (Bernard Haitink taking the podium for Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia, with Dubravka Tomsic, and his Fifth Symphony), guess again — and then lace up your track shoes for next weekend’s opening marathon.

It’ll kick off Friday September 19 with what will surely be one of the most unusual offerings of the entire 2003-2004 season: the Handel & Haydn Society presenting the "first fully staged production" of Claudio Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespro della Beata Vergine. You mightn’t have been aware that Monteverdi’s masterpiece needed staging, but in any case, H&H isn’t just throwing in a few Renaissance dance steps. Music director Grant Llewellyn has brought in Chinese stage director Chen Shi-Zheng, with whom he collaborated on Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the 2001 Spoleto USA Festival; American Repertory Theatre subscribers will recognize the name as the director of Charles J. Mee’s Snow in June, which the ART will be presenting in December. Chen explains, "My staged version is a modern ceremony from an Asian perspective in which the Virgin Mary is celebrated as an icon of universal love." The staging will include eight Asian dancers; set and costume design will be by Yi Li Ming and Cheng Shu Yi, who worked with Chen on Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999. Performances are September 19 and 20 at 8 p.m. and September 21 at 3 p.m. at the newly renovated Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont Street in the Theater District. Tickets are $42 to $74; call TeleCharge at (800) 233-3123 or visit www.telecharge.com.

Saturday brings another one-of-a-kind event, Richard Conrad’s new organization, the Bostonians, making its debut with a six-hour "Wagner Marathon" that’s described as "excerpts from all the operas and music dramas of Richard Wagner performed by 45 of your favorite New England singers and instrumentalists." Conrad, you’ll remember, was the founder of the Boston Academy of Music (now Opera Boston) and its artistic director before being removed by his board two years ago. "Your favorite singers" might include Ellen Chickering, Debra Rentz, Marion Dry, D’Anna Fortunato, Ray Bauwens, Keith Jurosko, and Conrad himself, all performing with piano accompaniment; also on the docket is the Siegfried Idyll performed "by 14 players, at it was in the first performance at Wagner’s home." Look for the rest of the Bostonians’ first season to include Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors in December and Victor Herbert’s Eileen in March. The Wagner Marathon will take place September 20 from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the First and Second Church, at the corner of Berkeley and Marlborough Streets. Tickets are $35, $30 for seniors and students; call (617) 242-4015 or visit www.thebostonians.org.

And if you were smart enough to bring a picnic dinner, you can gulp it down on your way out to Lexington, where at 8 p.m. in Follen Community Church, 755 Massachusetts Avenue, Peggy Pearson’s redoubtable Winsor Music will be presenting the Boston premiere of John Halle’s Mortgaging the Earth, which is set to a text by Harvard president Lawrence Summers. Haydn’s String Quartet in D Opus 1 No. 3 and Brahms Piano Trio No. 2, in C, will fill out the program. Tickets, available at the door only, are $20, $10 for seniors and students, free to those ages 9 to 18. For more information, call (781) 863-2861 or visit www.winsormusic.org.

You’ll have Sunday morning to rest up before spending a pleasant afternoon at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 the Fenway, where at 1:30 p.m. the Borromeo String Quartet will perform György Kurtág’s Officium Breve in Memoriam, Andreae Szervansky and Brahms’s String Quartet No. 1, in C minor. Tickets are $20, $14 for seniors, $10 for college students, $5 for children ages 5 to 17; call (866) 468-7619 or visit www.ticketweb.com.

And though that’s it for next weekend, don’t put your feet up just yet, because Teatro Lirico d’Europa, the Bulgarian company that has brought some wonderful productions to Boston, including last year’s Madama Butterfly, will be here starting Tuesday with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Performances are September 23 through 27 at 7:30 p.m. and September 28 at 2 p.m. at the Cutler Majestic. Tickets are $15 to $68.50; call TeleCharge at (800) 233-3123 or visit www.telecharge.com.


Issue Date: September 12 - 18, 2003
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