Date: Friday, October 11
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Venue: University Theatre
Ticket Prices
$10 General Admission
$5 Non-UTD Students
$5 UTD Alumni
$5 Children under 18
Free to UTD Faculty/Staff
Free to UTD Students with valid UTD Photo ID

PROGRAM
I
Three German Dances, K.605
No. 1
No. 2
No. 3 (Die Schlittenfahrt)

II
L’Amerò, sarò costante from Il Rè Pastore, K. 208

III
Six Nocturnes

Luci care, luci belle, K.346
Se lontan ben mio tu sei, K.438
Due pupille amabili, K.439
Piá non si trovano fra mille amanti, K.549
Ecco quel fiero istante, K.436
Mi lagnerò tacendo, K.437

Rebecca Duren, Soprano
Sherna Armstrong, Mezzo-Soprano
Blake Davidson, Baritone
Igor Borodin, Ronald Neal, Violins
Sam Fletcher, Cello
Jeff Lankov, Harpsichord

IV
Sonata in F, K.332

Allegro
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro

V
Music for the Commedia dell'Arte, K.466

Overture
Allegro
Maestoso
Allegro
Poco adagio
Vivo; Andante; Allegro assai
Adagio; Allegro
Maestoso
Andante misterioso (à la Turca)
Allegretto; Presto
Maestoso con energica
Allegro
Allegro; Marcia; Allegro
Finale

Stage Direction by Fred Curchack
Orchestral Realization by Franz Beyer
Choreography by Paula Morelan
Costumes by Michael Robinson

CAST
Pantalone: a cantankerous and
avaricious merchant . . . . . . . . . . Fred Curchack

Pierrot: Pantalone's long-suffering
servant . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maryam Baig

Colombina: Pantalone's ward;
in love with Arlecchino . . . . . . . . . . Rebecca Duren

Arlecchino (Harlequin): Colombina's lover, later disguised
as The Turk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Avant III

Il Dottore (the Doctor): rich, elderly crony of Pantalone, suitor
of Colombina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Lozano
 

Musica Nova Personnel

Robert Xavier Rodríguez, Director
Jeff Lankov, Assistant, Harpsichord, piano

Flute: Saar Ravid
Oboe: Elizabeth Geist, Michael Aducci
Bassoon: Kathleen Reynolds, Sophie Rutenbar
Horn: William Scharnberg, Terry Reynolds
Trumpet: John Holt, Lee Smith
Percussion: Carol Chen, DeLisa Lay
Keyboard: Jeff Lankov, Gorden Cheng
Violin: Igor Borodin, Ronald Neal, Angela Shaw
Viola: Ron Houston
Cello: Sam Fletcher
Contrabass: Patrick Moulds
Singers: Rebecca Duren, Soprano; Sherna Armstrong, Blake Davidson
 

Synopsis
Venice, 1783. Pantalone seeks to arrange the marriage of Colombina to the Dottore. Colombina, Arlecchino and Pierrot conspire to thwart Pantalone's plan. When Pantalone presents the Dottore to Colombina, she rejects him and seeks consolation from Arlecchino and Pierrot. Pantalone, nevertheless, forces Colombina to sign an engagement contract, giving up her dowry to him. As Pantalone and the Dottore toast their success, Arlecchino protests then reappears disguised as a Turk. The Turk impresses Pantalone as a new, ostensibly wealthier, suitor to the eager Colombina. Enraged, the Dottore challenges the Turk to a duel and stabs him. The Turk falls to the ground, and Colombina begs to give him one last kiss before his body is carried away. As she does, the Turk reveals himself as Arlecchino – alive. Colombina and Arlecchino embrace, Pantalone and the Dottore relent, and there is general rejoicing for the happy couple.


Program Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) is widely regarded as the greatest musical genius who ever lived, comparable only to Johann Sebastian Bach. From his first composition, K.1, a Minuet composed at the age of five, to his last, the unfinished Requiem, K.626, Mozart displayed unsurpassed technical virtuosity, effortless facility, an extraordinary emotional range and a complete mastery of all the musical styles and genres of his day. Mozart's finest achievements were his operas, particularly his comedies, which rank him, along with Shakespeare, among the most sublime of dramatists.

In The Classical Style, Charles Rosen wrote that Mozart’s music is often trivialized by those who see in it, "nothing but lightness, grace and charm... It is only through recognizing the violence and the sensuality at the center of Mozart’s work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence... Perhaps no composer used the seductive physical power of music with the intensity and the range of Mozart... What is most extraordinary about Mozart’s style is the combination of physical delight – sensuous play of sonority, an indulgence in the most luscious harmonic sequences – with a purity and harmony of line and form that render the seduction all the more efficient."

Our concert begins with Mozart's Three German Dances, K.605, in which rich and colorful symphonic textures are lavished on this simple popular form. The dances end with the famous Schlittenfahrt, or "sleighride."

The aria, "L’Amerò, sarò costante," from the early festival opera,Il Rè Pastore, K.208, intertwines the solo soprano and obbligato violin in a voluptuous dialogue in rondo form. The text is by Mozart's long-time librettist, Pietro Metastasio.

The Six Nocturnes, K.346, 438, 439, 549, 436, 437 are intimate love serenades also set to texts by Metastasio. Originally scored for three singers and three bassett horns (18th-century alto clarinets), the Nocturnes will be performed tonight accompanied by string trio and harpsichord. These little-known miniatures employ piquant dissonances, distant modulations and subtly varied rhythmic figurations characteristic of Mozart's finest operatic ensembles.

The first half concludes with Mozart's Sonata in F-Major, K.332. In the first movement, Mozart's treatment of the sonata-allegro form presents, one after the other, several highly contrastive themes, not unlike the introduction of commedia dell'arte .

Characters on the stage: first the gentle Colombina, then the spirited Harlequin, then an ominous turn to the minor for Pantalone, and so on. The slow movement is a rapturously lyrical Adagio, followed by a toccata-like finale which combines the rondo and sonata-allegro forms in Mozart's most brilliant virtuoso style.

The featured work on tonight's concert is Fred Curchack's fully-staged pantomime production of Mozart's Music for the Commedia dell'Arte, K.446. First performed in 1783, this unique piece of musical theater was composed for a performance in Vienna in which Mozart himself acted in the role of Harlequin. The score was subsequently lost. In 1995, German musicologist Franz Beyer reconstructed the complete orchestration from the first violin part, which survived in two sections: the first half of the part was in Berlin and the last half in Paris. The overture and finale were missing, so Beyer interpolated movements from two early Mozart symphonies, K.84 and K.120. From Mozart's fragmentary stage directions marked as cues in the violin part, Fred Curchack and Robert Xavier Rodríguez have developed a detailed scenario for the dramatic action, following traditional commedia plots and incorporating traditional comic routines, or lazzi. In addition, Rodríguez has re-edited Beyer's orchestration and has added a new harpsichord part such as might have been improvised in the original production. Tonight's performance is the world premiere of this new version.

The commedia dell'arte began in 16th-Century Italy as an intricate theatrical genre improvised by professional actors, as opposed to the simpler commedia sostenuta, or learned drama, which could be memorized by amateurs. The defining characteristics of the commedia dell'arte are improvisation, clever word play, acrobatics, physical comedy and the use of a recurring family of stock characters with specific names, masks, costumes and personality traits. Over the centuries, the commedia dell'arte has evolved to embrace, alternatively and sometimes simultaneously, both the ribald and the refined. 17th-Century touring Italian troupes playing in Paris for a French-speaking audience were obliged to include more pantomime than dialogue in their shows, thus initiating the development of the commedia dell'arte in France as a silent art. Images of the commedia dell'arte have inspired countless visual artists, from Watteau and Tiepolo to Picasso, Rousseau, Klee, Lipchitz, Hockney and Taymor. Commedia plots abound in the plays of Shakespeare and Moliñre and in the operas of Mozart , Rossini, Donizetti and others. The indelible personalities of the stock commedia characters have never left the stage since their inception; only their names and costumes have changed: from Pantalone to Shylock, from Pierrot to Chaplin, from Colombina to Marilyn Monroe, from the Zanni to the Marx Brothers and from Harlequin to Curchack's Freddie Chickan .