Puccini is past, Ravel is on the docket now.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reacquainting myself with
L’Heure espagnole and
L’Enfant et les Sortileges in anticipation of
Portland Opera‘s upcoming production at the beginning of April. This is a very good thing, not only because I love Ravel’s music, but also because it gives me an excuse to delve into the vocal, orchestral, chamber, and solo piano repertoire immediately surrounding these two works.
In his review of the premiere of
L’Heure in May, 1911, Pierre Lalo stated that:
The orchestration…is charming, brilliant, idiosyncratic, diverse, full of subtle timbres and rare sonorities…That. for the musical material he employs, for the chord progressions and explorations of harmonies which for him are customary, M. Ravel owes much to Debussy is a manifest fact. But the soul of his music and of his art is entirely different. M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity.
Here’s the opening of the 1987 Glyndebourne Festival production of
L’Heure espagnole, designed by Maurice Sendak and directed by Frank Corsaro. Expect more video clips of both operas from my
YouTube channel between now and the end of March.
First of all, I love my job…I love my job….I love my job. I really do. But 6:30 am is too early to be driving to a gig. I keep asking myself over and over, “Who the [blazes] booked this thing???!” And then being forced to answer, “Oh. I did.” 