Scipione Sangiovanni is competing at the Cliburn competition later this month
Our classical music contributor Gregory Sullivan Isaacs updates us on what’s coming this month in choral and orchestral music:
We will also get treated to (or inflicted with, depending on your view) Carl Orff’s blockbuster oratorio Carmina Burana by both the Dallas and Fort Worth symphonies. (You would think that they would talk to each other so such an unfortunate colliding wouldn’t happen.) The Fort Worth Opera continues its well-received season, while four other groups all wind up their seasons with major concerts. Here are the details.
• May 5 at 7:30 p.m. at SMU’s Caruth Auditorium is the Voices of Change concert. They will welcome composer Derek Bermel and play some of his music. Arrive at 6:30 to hear the informative Laurie Shulman give a preview. On the same day at 7, Orpheus Chamber Singers presents a concert at Preston Hollow Presbyterian.
• The Fort Worth Opera’s summer festival includes Puccini’s three-hanky favorite, La Boheme, Donizetti’s comedy (one is really funny — many aren’t) Daughter of the Regiment, Richard Strauss’ comedy (that is more amusing than a knee-slapper like Daughter), Ariadne auf Naxos and the super-intense, disturbing, marvelous refill-your-valium-first, Glory Denied. All four are excellent. The innovative Frontiers! program will showcase scenes from new operas by living composers on May 9 at 6 p.m. and May 10 at 4 p.m.
• May 10 also brings some great string quartet playing to the new City Performance Hall as Chamber Music International presents a concert that contains two masterpieces: Beethoven’s Razumowsky quartet and Bartok’s fourth string quartet. There is other music on the program, but these two are must hears.
• The Carmina Burana overload starts with the FWO May 17–19 at Bass Hall. The DSO plays this same work, with its lewd sexual lyrics, May 23–25. Both symphonies have fine soloists and it will be, if nothing else, an opportunity to contrast the area’s two major conductors: Jaap van Zweden and Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
• May 17–19, the DSO takes a big risk by presenting the first act of Wagner’s opera, Die Walküre. The main interest here is tenor Clifton Forbis, who is also on the faculty of SMU. This is one act of a four opera cycle so it is a part of a part of a whole. Tickets are hard to come by, but it should be worth it if you are a Wagner fan.
