A night with Mr. T — Tchaikovsky, that’s — in Vallejo – Occasions-Herald

He organized the “Best Wagner Live performance Ever!” final summer season, an all-Wagner program that included excerpts from the Nineteenth-century German composer’s well-known operas and featured a pair of visitor vocalists belting out arias.

It was an fascinating idea — and definitely happy some Bay Space Wagner followers — and Thomas Conlin, the internationally recognized, Grammy-winning conductor behind the live performance, has determined to stage one other themed showcase of a well-known composer’s catalog, this time Tchaikovsky and naming it “Tchaikovsky’s Star-Crossed Lovers.”

That includes excerpts from the Russian composer’s “Eugene Onegin” opera and a pair of orchestral works, the “Romeo and Juliet, Overture Fantasy” and the “Francesa da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante,” the all-Tchaikovsky live performance, with Conlin main the Vallejo Pageant Orchestra, will get underway at 7:30 p.m. Saturday within the Empress Theatre in Vallejo.

Moreover the total orchestra, the live performance, beneath the aegis of the Vallejo Middle for the Arts, will function a pair of opera stars, soprano Sarah Tucker and baritone Michael Adams.

A local of Washington, D.C., and a resident of Napa, Conlin, in response to a sequence of emailed questions earlier this week, mentioned, “We seemingly will current extra single-composer applications. I personally like this format, which is akin to what many artwork museums have discovered very enticing: a Renoir retrospective, Picasso’s center interval, and so forth.”

Calling Tchaikovsky, the composer of “Swan Lake,” “Nutcracker” and the “1812 Overture,” the “hottest Russian composer of all time,” he mentioned that lofty standing rests with the composer’s tuneful music, heartfelt melodies, wealthy, heat harmonies, and colourful orchestration, “all of which evoke a profound emotional response.”

That’s actually true of “Onegin,” because it’s referred to as for brief, a 145-year-old chestnut notable for a musical rating that’s psychologically penetrating, emotionally affecting, and naturally conversational.

Based mostly on Russian poet Pushkin’s verse novel of the identical title, it tells the story of a largely unfeeling, heartless big-city man sad within the bourgeois nation environment of a younger girl named Tatyana.

It’s best recognized for its Act 1 “The Letter Scene,” through which she writes a protracted love letter to the stranger, Onegin, whom she simply met, and Tucker will likely be within the highlight to ship one in every of opera’s basic arias because the music turns lyrical and reflective.

Different scenes, mentioned Conlin, embody one other assembly between the 2 “at which she is devastated by his rejection and his accusation of her immaturity. Within the remaining scene Onegin returns, declares his love for her, and begs her forgiveness.” However Tatyana has married and tells him she is not going to betray her husband.

All through, Tchaikovsky proves again and again — as he does in nearly all of his compositions — that he’s a grasp of orchestration and melody, the hummable a part of a track, if not different key parts of music: rhythm, tone shade, concord and construction.

Tucker’s resume contains performances in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas, Philadelphia, North Carolina, Virginia and Utah, the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Richmond, Lexington, Dayton and Las Colinas, on the Crystal Cathedral in Orange, California, and with New York Metropolis Ballet at Lincoln Middle.

Conlin famous that in her debut final season as Fiordiligi in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” with San Diego Opera, she was described by Opera Information as a “standout” with “impeccable pitch and phrasing.” Tucker additionally was a semifinalist within the Metropolitan Opera Nationwide Council Auditions.

Opera Information journal praised Adams for “brandishing a good looking, evenly produced, properly ripe sound,” mentioned Conlin, who’s carried out opera firms and symphony orchestras in 15 international locations and 28 American states.

Adams, who sang the title position in “Eugene Onegin” with Seattle Opera, returned to his dwelling state of Texas final season to carry out Sharpless in “Madame Butterfly” with Dallas Opera and the Rely in “The Marriage of Figaro” with Austin Opera. He has sung not too long ago with Deutsche Oper Berlin, Utah Opera, Grand Teatre del Liceu, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Omaha Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Knoxville Opera and the Glimmerglass Pageant. He was a 2018 winner at The William Matheus Sullivan Musical Basis and 2015 first-place winner within the Gerda Lissner Worldwide Vocal Competitors, amongst different notable awards.

Tchaikovsky’s musical settings of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Francesca da Rimini,” taken from Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” mesh nicely with the theme of star-crossed lovers, “as these affairs, like Onegin’s, finish tragically,” mentioned Conlin, who earned a doctoral diploma in humane letters from West Virginia Wesleyan College and doctorate in music from the College of Charleston.

“Francesca da Rimini,” in E minor and clocking in about 25 minutes, is the composer’s response to the story of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, who’re misplaced souls in hell on account of their adultery. The music begins darkly, turns agitated and grim, however halfway develops a tranquil love theme. No shock, the torrent of sound at first returns and ends, considerably chillingly, with 10 sturdy chords.

Within the “Romeo and Juliet,” in B minor and about 20 minutes lengthy, the music ranges from candy expressions that counsel the craving love between the younger lovers to a fast development of a frenzied sounds, a musical image of gang violence and the strife between the Capulet and Montague households.

Whereas the humanities are usually not essentially separate from our present nationwide and world affairs, it’s fascinating to realized, Conlin mentioned, that whereas Tchaikovsky was born in Russia, his paternal household was from Ukraine, due to this fact his Ukrainian origins have been neither celebrated by the Soviets nor by Russians of in the present day. On April 2, 2022, Russian missiles terrorized town of Kremenchuk, the birthplace of Tchaikovsky’s great-grandfather Fedor Chaika, a Cossack, who together with lots of the composer’s ancestors, battled towards Russia and different empires in search of to dominate the territory of Ukraine, he added.

Nonetheless, mentioned Conlin, “Coincidental to the present scenario in Ukraine, I might level out that, whereas he’s actually the quintessential Russian composer, Tchaikovsky’s ancestry is Ukrainian.  I’m positively not making an attempt to make a political assertion, as I firmly imagine that the humanities are above politics.”

His resume exhibits him as a frequent visitor conductor with opera and ballet firms and symphony orchestras on 5 continents, most not too long ago in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, Eire, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey and all through america.

The Grammy?

Conlin carried out the Warsaw Philharmonic orchestra on a recording of George Crumb’s “Star-Youngster,” which received the Grammy for Finest Modern Classical Composition and is a part of a whole version of the American composer’s works, which ClassicsToday.com calls “one of the important recording tasks at present in progress, in addition to one of the artistically profitable.”

Moreover, Conlin’s efficiency of Mozart’s opera “Lucio Silla” in 1968 in Baltimore as a scholar at Johns Hopkins College marked the first-ever use of projected translations, or supertitles, although others, together with former opera impresario Lotfi Mansouri and opera luminary and singer Beverly Sills have claimed to have devised them.

“A season of classical music anyplace on the planet is unimaginable with out works by Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, to call however a number of on the record of nice and essential Russian composers,” mentioned Conlin. “However Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is in the present day regarded in every single place because the quintessential Russian composer. What would Christmas in America be with out the ‘Nutcracker’ ballet performances that dominate theaters in the course of the vacation season? Can anybody think about Christmas buying unaccompanied by ‘The Dance of the Sugar Fairy’ or an outside live performance on the Fourth of July with out the stirring ‘1812 Overture’?”

IF YOU GOVallejo Pageant Orchestra”Tchaikovsky’s Star-Crossed Lovers”7:30 p.m. SaturdayEmpress Theatre330 Virginia St., VallejoTickets: $29 to $97www.empresstheatre.org(707) 552-2400