05.04.2019
“One Day in America…”
Our cycle of concerts of chamber music for voice in the dress circle foyer continues on 13 April with a programme entitled „One Day in America“.
The programme includes music by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Miller, Samuel Barber, and other well-known American composers. „The original idea was to perform excerpts from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess,“ says concert organizer Maria Kopyseva, who compiled the programme, „but we decided not to restrict ourselves to a single opera, but to give ourselves some creative freedom. So the programme also includes works by other American composers who are household names.“
„Porgy and Bess was first performed on Broadway in 1935,“ says the concert’s director Margarita Kunitsyna. „And we decided that what happened ‘one day in America’ happened right then. All the music in the programme is from the 1930s. The concert will be a kind of mini-play: we have interwoven the arias and romances with a plot to create a love story — the characters meet, fall in love and listen to various types of music. Of course, we’ve made sure to include the traditional American happy ending, which will take place at the premiere of Gershwin’s opera on Broadway.“
The USA in the 1930s has been an inexhaustible fount of inspiration for artists, composers, directors, and writers, who borrow elements of that decade’s style, music, or outrageous behaviour in order to brighten up everyday life. Long strings of beads, feather boas, dark lipstick, narrow eyebrows, trousers with braces, hats, loose morals — all these invariably arouse delight in fans of burlesque, and the concert’s organizers will be using some of the most vivid symbols of the decade. However, the most important element remains the music, conceived one sultry night in the American South and transferred to the gleaming lights of Manhattan.
The concert will feature opera singers Ekaterina Egorova, Maria Litke, Svetlana Monchak, Alexander Bezrukov, Boris Stepanov, and Alexander Shakhov.
The programme includes music by George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Miller, Samuel Barber, and other well-known American composers. „The original idea was to perform excerpts from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess,“ says concert organizer Maria Kopyseva, who compiled the programme, „but we decided not to restrict ourselves to a single opera, but to give ourselves some creative freedom. So the programme also includes works by other American composers who are household names.“
„Porgy and Bess was first performed on Broadway in 1935,“ says the concert’s director Margarita Kunitsyna. „And we decided that what happened ‘one day in America’ happened right then. All the music in the programme is from the 1930s. The concert will be a kind of mini-play: we have interwoven the arias and romances with a plot to create a love story — the characters meet, fall in love and listen to various types of music. Of course, we’ve made sure to include the traditional American happy ending, which will take place at the premiere of Gershwin’s opera on Broadway.“
The USA in the 1930s has been an inexhaustible fount of inspiration for artists, composers, directors, and writers, who borrow elements of that decade’s style, music, or outrageous behaviour in order to brighten up everyday life. Long strings of beads, feather boas, dark lipstick, narrow eyebrows, trousers with braces, hats, loose morals — all these invariably arouse delight in fans of burlesque, and the concert’s organizers will be using some of the most vivid symbols of the decade. However, the most important element remains the music, conceived one sultry night in the American South and transferred to the gleaming lights of Manhattan.
The concert will feature opera singers Ekaterina Egorova, Maria Litke, Svetlana Monchak, Alexander Bezrukov, Boris Stepanov, and Alexander Shakhov.
