Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Waschka: St. Ambrose; Mazzoli: Song from the Uproar; Brady: Three Cities

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

This Sunday I will be presenting a trilogy of short lyric theater pieces on the general theme of wanderlust. First, there's Saint Ambrose (1998-2001), a chamber opera in one act for saxophonist/actor and recorded electronic computer music. Internationally acclaimed sax player Steve Duke commissioned composer Rodney Waschka II to craft a biographical stagepiece about the American author Ambrose Bierce (b. 1842). Bierce, you could say, never officially died. In 1913 he wandered over the Mexican border into the desert and was never seen again. His body was never found. In this lyric presentation we're led to believe Bierce is not dead: he has appeared in public to deliver a lecture. Ambrose Bierce witnessed first hand the horrors of the American Civil War. Bierce's stories, essays and journalism are full of cynical wit and dark satire. In The Devil's Dictionary he defines a saint as "a dead sinner." Capstone Records of Brooklyn, NY released Saint Ambrose on a single silver disc in 2002.

Second in the lineup is Missy Mazzoli's Song from the Uproar:The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt (2012). Like Saint Ambrose, this is a biographical piece, dealing with the Swiss adventurer (b. 1877). This brilliant, convention-defying woman, who dressed as a man, led a nomadic existence, documenting her travels in her journals and short stories. She drowned in a flash flood in the North African desert in 1904. Mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer portrays Isabelle. Five other solo vocalists, male and female, take part in the studio recording. The five instrumentalists of the Now Ensemble are directed by Steven Osgood. Mazzoli's chamber opera is, like Rodney Waschka's work, so compact it fits easily onto one compact disc.

The third and last small-scale opera presents us with yet another strange biographical portrait. How could one of North America's most prominent surgeons end up on the march with Mao Tse Tung's army fighting the Japanese in rural Northern China? The Canadian doctor Norman Bethune (1890-1939) was a man of many parts: inventor, artist, writer, and passionate humanitarian activist. Over the last five years of his life he went from Montreal to Madrid to Chin Ch'a Chi. Those are the Three Cities in the Life of Dr. Norman Bethune (2003) by Tim Brady. He put together his own libretto, drawn from Dr. Bethune's letters and poetry, plus poems by Montreal's own Dorothy Livesay and song lyrics about the Spanish Civil War. Three Cities was recorded in 2005 in the studios of Radio Canada Montreal. Baritone Michael Donovan portrays the good doctor, backed by the eight members of the Bradyworks instrumental ensemble. Tim Brady himself plays electric guitar. Three Cities was released in 2005 on a single Ambiances Magnétiques compact discs.

Thanks to Rob Meehan, former classics DJ here at WWUH and a specialist collector of the recorded "alternative" classical music of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, for the loan of all three discs for broadcast.