Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Bolcom: Lucrezia; Musto: Bastianello; Mercurio: Many Voices

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Comic opera and operetta will be the general fare throughout the nine Sundays of these two Summer months, plus other lighter weight lyric theater works that compliment your vacation-time frame of mind.

We begin the Summer season with a pair of comic chamber operas by two contemporary American composers, both with wordbooks by a contemporary American librettist, Mark Campbell. Both compositions are scored for five singers and two pianos. Both were commissioned and performed by the New York Festival of Song and premiered in a double bill in March of 2008 at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall.

Lucrezia by William Bolcom (b. 1938) is Bolcom's riff on the Zarzuela, the popular lyric theater genre of Spain early on in the twentieth century. It's also his operatic re-imagining of the Renaissance writer Nicolo Machiavelli's Italian language comedy La Mandragola, which sends up the Roman Catholic Church, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and the sanctity of motherhood.

Bastianello by John Musto (b. 1954) is a modern take on an Italian folktale that pokes fun at the institution of marriage. The American record label Bridge issued Lucrezia and Bastianello together in a two-CD package as Two Comic Operas in 2010.

William Bolcom and John Musto have written a considerable body of operatic works between them. Steven Mercurio (b. 1956) is internationally renowned as an opera conductor. Like Gustav Mahler, he conducted at the Met, and like Mahler too, he has composed numerous songs, which he eventually orchestrated. Mercurio himself describes them as "melancholy musings." His orchestrated collection (or "cycle," if you will) from 2000 is Many Voices.

Mercurio has worked with the vocal greats of opera in our time: soprano Sumi Jo, tenors Andrea Bocelli and Rolando Villazon, and baritone Gino Quilico. These "many voices" and others lent their talents to Sony Classical's 2006 release. Mercurio leads the Prague Philharmonia, with tracks recorded in Prague's famous Rudolfinum concert hall. Andrea Bocelli wrote the lyrics for two of the songs, "Desiderio" and "Paternita." Mercurio wrote the verses for one of them, Eugene O"Neill for another. After listening to those two acerbic comic operas of Bolcom and Musto, Mercurio's easygoing melancholy will serve as a tuneful tonic for your ears. I broadcast two tracks from the single Sony CD on Sunday, September 2, 2012. I present the entire seven songs of Many Voices today.