Bard Music Festival
Program Five • Women Musicians in Berlioz’s Time
August 11
As Program Five discovers, Pauline Viardot was one of several women to stake a serious claim in the previously all-male province of professional music. Berlioz helped stage La Esmeralda, an opera by fellow Reicha student Louise Bertin, to whom he dedicated the first version of Les nuits d’eté. One of the Romantic era’s most distinguished pianists, Clara Schumann is finally also winning recognition today for her own compositions, including the piano collection Soirées musicales. She was among the attendees of the first performance of Viardot’s Le dernier sorcier. This little-known rarity—a two-act chamber opera set to a French libretto by Ivan Turgenev, the composer’s lover—will be performed in a semi-staged production of Viardot’s original salon arrangement for voices and piano, in collaboration with Sing for Hope. Also on the program are two Berlioz works for female voice—Le mort d’Ophélie, inspired by Hamlet, and La captive, which Viardot sang in London—together with a Rossini aria made famous by Viardot’s sister, legendary singer Maria Malibran.
Program
2:30 pm • Preconcert Talk with Hilary Poriss
3 pm • Performance: Laquita Mitchell, Monica Yunus, and Camille Zamora, sopranos; Rebecca Ringle Kamarei and Adriana Zabala, mezzo-sopranos; Noah Stewart, tenor; Babatunde Akinboboye, baritone; Anna Polonsky and Lucy Tucker Yates, piano; Sharyn Pirtle, director of Le dernier sorcier; and others
Hector Berlioz (1803–69)
Le mort d’Ophélie, Op. 18, No. 2 (1842)
La captive, Op. 12 (1831–32)
Pauline Viardot (1821–1910)
Le dernier sorcier (1869)
Works by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868); Louise Bertin (1805–77); Clara Schumann (1819–96); and others
Artists & Scholars
Laquita Mitchell
Soprano
Monica Yunus
Soprano
Camille Zamora
Soprano
Rebecca Ringle Kamarei
Mezzo-soprano
Adriana Zabala
Mezzo-soprano
Noah Stewart
Tenor
Babatunde Akinboboye
Baritone
Anna Polonsky
Piano
Lucy Tucker Yates
Piano
Sharyn Pirtle
Director, Le dernier sorcier
Hilary Poriss
Musicologist, Preconcert Talk
Le dernier sorcier
“Nearly every aria in this opera is a banger. Pauline Viardot—herself a notable soprano and prolific composer of art songs—had a knack for finding the tune within a text…Le dernier sorcier holds its own against famous contemporaries, and companies would be remiss not to consider programming it in the future.” —San Francisco Classical Voice, on Sing For Hope’s 2023 staging of Viardot’s Le dernier sorcier
Recording
Soprano Camille Zamora (featured on Program Five in Le dernier sorcier) has been instrumental in the revival of Viardot’s opera—she wrote the English-language narration and spearheaded a studio recording of the work in 2019, featured below.
Plan Your Visit
Eat & Stay
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Eat & StayDirections
Bard College’s main campus is located in Annandale-on-Hudson (a hamlet of Red Hook), New York, on the east bank of the Hudson River, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston. The Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway provide the most direct routes to our campus. Click the Google map below, or get directions by entering the following address into your GPS: 60 Manor Avenue, Red Hook, NY 12571.
From the East
If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.9 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
From the West
If you are traveling from west of the Hudson River, take the New York State Thruway (I-87) to exit 19 (Kingston), take Route 209 (changes to Route 199 at the Hudson River) over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to Route 9G, turn left onto Route 9G, drive north 3.5 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
About the Venue
Sosnoff Theater
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