In his second week with the orchestra, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos returns March 18-20 to conduct Rossini’s Stabat Mater, the most acclaimed of the composer’s late works. This 1841 choral masterpiece features the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, conductor, and a quartet of internationally-acclaimed soloists: soprano Albina Shagimuratova and mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in their BSO debuts; tenor Eric Cutler; and bass-baritone Alfred Walker. The program’s first half is Mendelssohn’s Overture and Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s beloved play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also featuring Ms. Shagimuratova, Ms. Coote, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
At the time Rossini (1792-1868) “retired” from composing operas in 1829, he had created 36 operas over a span of 19 years and was considered the world’s greatest living opera composer. Though he turned his attention elsewhere during the last four decades of his life, his theatrical style found its way into his 1841 masterpiece, Stabat Mater. The piece was begun in 1832 at the request of Don Francisco Fernandez Varela of Spain, but Rossini only completed six movements before being sidelined by illness. An old friend and fellow-composer, Giovanni Tadolini, finished the commission, which was passed off as Rossini’s work alone. Before publication, however, Rossini excised Tadolini’s contributions and created four more movements of his own in 1841. This final version, premiered in 1842, was an unqualified success, with 29 performances in the first year alone. The only previous BSO performances of this masterwork were in April 1974 under Carlo Maria Giulini, and also featuring the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.
When Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was a child, he and his sisters often read aloud the plays of Shakespeare, acting out the different roles. When he was only 17, young Felix transformed this passion into music, beginning composition of an overture that vividly captures the mischief and lyricism of the play. The incidental music wasn’t composed until much later, in 1843, just four years before two strokes cut Mendelssohn’s life tragically short. Composed at the request of the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, the work brilliantly transforms the rich thematic material of the overture into an integrated score that is arguably the most famous incidental music in history, including the famous Wedding March. These performances feature a significant selection of excerpts from the complete score.
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