Bard Music Festival

Program Three • The Sounds of a Nation: Patriotism and Antiquity

August 10

Add to Calendar2024-08-10 7:00 pm2024-08-10 7:00 pmEDTProgram Three • The Sounds of a Nation: Patriotism and AntiquityFisher Center, Sosnoff Theater,
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Program Three offers an orchestral snapshot of mid-19th century France. Originally conceived as the climax of a symphony celebrating Napoleon Bonaparte, Berlioz’s choral setting of the Te Deum hymn is one of his greatest religious works, combining architectural mastery with grandeur of expression.

Les Troyens, his grand opera based on Virgil’s Aeneid, is yet more monumental in scope. An epic tour de force that, to his chagrin, the composer never saw performed complete, the opera is represented here by the “Trojan March,” the tone poem “Royal Hunt and Storm,” and the Merchant of Venice-inspired duet “Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie.”

These share the program with Berlioz’s stirring arrangement of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, together with overtures by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber and Christoph Willibald Gluck, the composer Berlioz deemed, with Beethoven, one of music’s “two supreme gods.”

Program

6 pm • Preconcert Talk with Sarah Hibberd
7 pm • Performance: Renée Anne Louprette GCP ’19, organ; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director; The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87)

Overture to Iphigenia in Aulis (1773; arr. Wagner, 1847)

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836)

Hymne des Marseillais (1792; arr. Berlioz, 1830)

Jana McIntyre, soprano

Hector Berlioz (1803–69)

From Les Troyens (1856–58)
Trojan March
Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie
Royal Hunt and Storm

Megan Moore, mezzo-soprano
Joshua Blue, tenor

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871)

Overture to Fra Diavolo (1830)

INTERMISSION

Hector Berlioz

Te Deum, Op. 22 (1849)
Te Deum laudamus (Hymn)
Tibi omnes Angeli (Hymn)
Dignare, Domine (Prayer)
Christe, rex gloriae (Hymn)
Te ergo quaesumus (Prayer)
Judex crederis (Hymn and Prayer)

Joshua Blue, tenor

Artists & Scholars

Leon Botstein

Music Director, The Orchestra Now

James Bagwell

James Bagwell

Choral Director, Bard Festival Chorale

Renée Anne Louprette

Renée Anne Louprette GCP ’19

Organ

Jana McIntyre

Jana McIntyre

Soprano

Megan Moore

Megan Moore

Mezzo-soprano

Joshua Blue

Joshua Blue

Tenor

Sarah Hibberd

Sarah Hibberd

Scholar in Residence, Berlioz and His World

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