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Afternoon Concert: Thursday Opera Matinee: Barber - Vanessa

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Music: Classical: Opera

Afternoon on 3

17/11/2016

Barber - Vanessa

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert

Penny Gore presents a Wexford Festival Opera production of Barber's Vanessa.

Penny Gore presents a Wexford Festival Opera production of Barber's Vanessa. With soprano Claire Rutter, mezzo-soprano Carolyn Sproule and tenor Michael Brandenburg.

Samuel Barber was almost 48 years old when his first opera, Vanessa, was produced by New York's Metropolitan Opera Company on 23rd January, 1958. Already established as a master of song, operatic composers such as Puccini, Strauss and Berg arguably inform the work. However, the language is recognisably Barber's own and the orchestral writing is richly atmospheric.

The opera is set in an unspecified northern country, around 1905. The libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber's partner, tells of how Vanessa, her mother (the Old Baroness) and niece (Erika) have waited 20 years for the return of Vanessa's lover, Anatol. When he arrives, it transpires that he is the man's son, also named Anatol, and that the lover is dead. Nevertheless, Vanessa and the younger Anatol are drawn to each other, leaving Erika - seduced by Anatol on his first night at the house - pregnant and suicidal. When Vanessa and Anatol depart for Paris, Erika settles down to wait and, as her aunt had done before, gives orders for the house to be closed up.

Six years after its premiere Barber reduced the opera from four to three acts. He ran the original first two acts together and cut a coloratura aria for Vanessa herself. It is this more compact version that we'll hear from Wexford this afternoon.


2pm
Barber: Vanessa 

Vanessa .... Claire Rutter (soprano)
Erika .... Carolyn Sproule (mezzo-soprano)
The Old Baroness .... Rosalind Plowright (mezzo-soprano)
Anatol .... Michael Brandenburg (tenor) 
The Old Doctor .... James Westman (baritone) 
Nicholas ... Pietro di Bianco (bass-baritone) 

Orchestra and Chorus of Wexford Festival Opera
Timothy Myers (conductor).

Afternoon Concert: Thursday Opera Matinee

Thursday Opera Matinee

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