Upcoming and Past Events
AN AMERICAN SONGFEST — Wednesday, August 28, 2019
An American Songfest is a tribute to American music of many genres: art songs, folk music, opera, spirituals, and musical theater. Sopranos Genya Muzyczka, Elizabeth Perryman, and Elizabeth Honer, with accompanist David Maiullo, will perform a diverse program of American music from composers that include Duke Ellington and Cole Porter, as well as, Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 7:30 pm, at First Lutheran Church, 153 Park St in Montclair, New Jersey.
THE SOUND OF WORKING GIRLS — Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Melodies of working women of the opera world!
Featuring the music of Loewe, Charpentier, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Strauss (Johann), Strauss (Richard), Menotti, Willson, Weill, and Kern.
Please visit my YouTube channel — LyricVoiceSings — for video clips from this performance!
ICE CREAM PARLOR DIVAS — Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Sopranos Genya Muzyczka and Elizabeth Perryman, along with accompanist David Maiullo, will present Ice Cream Parlor Divas. The concert will serve scoops of your favorite music flavors: musical theater, spirituals, operetta, art songs/lieder, and oratorio, with a generous sprinkle of duets on top . . . .
OPERA GOES TO THE MOVIES — Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Sopranos Genya Muzyczka and Elizabeth Perryman, along with pianist David Maiullo, presented Opera Goes to the Movies. The concert explored how, when, and why opera is used in popular culture—especially movies—and featured the music of Puccini, Verdi, Dvorak, Gounod, Giordano, Offenbach, and several other hip composers.
The following four audio clips from the concert are now available on the Media page. Program notes about each aria and it’s relationship to popular culture are presented below.
Gounod: “Air des bijoux” (Jewel Song) from Faust
Donizetti: “Il dolce suono” (Mad Scene) from Lucia di Lammermoor
Korngold: “Glück das, mir verblieb” from Die tote Stadt
Puccini: “Quando m’en vo soletta” from La Bohème
Gounod: “Ah! Je ris” (Jewel Song) from Faust
Faust is purported to be the most popular opera of its day. Edith Wharton references the opera in the first paragraph of her 1920, Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence, “because nothing quite said ‘1870s New York’ to her readers” the way Gounod’s opera did. Martin Scorsese uses it to the same effect in his adaptation of The Age of Innocence (1993), in which we hear this aria sung. (Reference: Opera News, 04/16) Wharton’s novel is a portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York. It’s somehow fitting that the story of Marguerite in Faust is also one of desire and betrayal; it’s the story of an innocent girl falling prey to the machinations of the Devil himself and a weak man who sells his soul to be young again.
In addition, the Jewel Song is sung by Jeanette MacDonald in the movie San Francisco (1936), a movie about the earthquake of April 4, 1906.
And it is also sung or heard in the following films: Quartet (1981), Georgy Girl (1966, uncredited), and So This Is Love (1953; with Kathryn Grayson).
(Side note—Steven Spielberg, although he doesn’t use the Jewel Song, does use a scene from Faust in Lincoln (2012), his movie about our 16th president.)
Donizetti: “Il dolce suono” (Mad Scene) from Lucia di Lammermoor
In The Fifth Element (1997), the opening of Lucia’s mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is performed by an alien diva, Diva Plavalaguna, at the concert the protagonist Bruce Willis attends in an outer space resort named Paradise. Although the relationship between Lucia and Diva Plavalaguna is not obvious, one can make a partial parallel between the opera heroine’s death and that of the diva. Both women’s deaths are sacrificial, but that’s where the parallel ends. Lucia, in love with someone else, is forced into a loveless, politically advantageous (for her brother) marriage. She dies—a political pawn—carrying out her duty to her family, while the diva’s sacrificial death is for the redemption of humanity. As a side note—the sometimes unearthly (perhaps even alien?) quality of the operatic voice is on full display in Lucia’s mad scene.
Lucia’s Mad Scene it is also sung or heard in the following films: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), 22 Bullets (2010), The Stars Are Singing (1953), Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary (1941; sung by an uncredited Kathryn Grayson).
Korngold: “Glück das mir verblieb” (Marietta’s Lied) from Die tote Stadt
In The Big Lebowski (1998), the music is a part of the story and often an active plot device. Rather than the director/storyteller choosing the music as background (without any explanation or reason given for the choice), in The Big Lebowski the characters themselves choose the music, and the music is playing for the character. The film uses an eclectic range of music—Bob Dylan, Mozart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Henry Mancini, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition), Eagles, Elvis Costello, to name just a few. Every piece of music in this film represents or advances character, a theme, a personal quality, an event, or an emotion. The character of Jeffrey “Big” Lebowski chooses both the Mozart Requiem and this aria from Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) to intensify the mood as he feigns sorrow over his wife’s kidnapping.
It happens that the composer of this aria, Eric Korngold, was no stranger to movie music: He himself was an early Hollywood composer. In Vienna of the 1930s, he was already a well-known classical composer having written a number of operas in the grand Wagnerian style. But anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe, so he accepted an invitation from director Max Reinhardt to move to Hollywood to write the incidental music for Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he stayed on in the US when WWII broke out. Because of his sweeping romantic lines and his wonderful command of the orchestra, his subsequent film scores were a major success in Hollywood, and may even have influenced later composers, such as John Williams. He did much of his work for the swashbuckler movies (most often featuring Errol Flynn as the hero), which were popular in his day, including Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. He received Oscars for two of his film scores, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Anthony Adverse.
Puccini: “Quando m’en vo soletta” (Musetta’s Waltz) from La Bohème
In Moonstruck (1987), we have an example of a movie where some of the action actually occurs in the opera house. These scenes play a significant role in the film’s narrative, (Nicholas Cage and Cher’s characters fall in love during the last lines of “Donde lieta uscì”), and the music underscores the emotional life of the film. In this case, Puccini’s music helps to transform a “humble romance between working-class Brooklynites into a grand fairy-tale.” (Reference: Opera News, 08/16) (Another famous movie, Pretty Woman, follows a similar model; the two main characters fall in love at a performance of La Traviata.)
By the way, songwriter Bobby Worth borrowed Puccini’s “Musetta’s Waltz” melody and created the smash hit “Don’t You Know” for singer Della Reese in 1959. It turned out to be her biggest single hit ever, and one of her early performances of “Don’t You Know” was featured in the film A Bronx Tale (1993).
The aria is also sung or heard in the following movies: Mad City (1997), Boxing Helena (1993), Broadway Serenade (1939, uncredited), Love Me Forever (1935); and also most recently, in an episode of the TV series Mozart in the Jungle (2015).
PARIS, PART ONE — Sunday, September 20, 2015
In conjunction with the Bickford Theater in Morristown, NJ, the BRAVO Alliance of Performing Artists presented arias from 19th century opera—including ones by renowned composers Massenet, Offenbach, Bizet, and Delibes—that helped define the century as Romantic. With sopranos Genya Muzyczka and Elizabeth Perryman, and tenor David Santiago, accompanied by musical director David Maiullo.
FROM PARIS WITH LOVE — Sunday, August 16, 2015
This concert was a romantic tour of French opera and songs that featured the music of Bizet, Debussy, Delibes, Fauré, Gluck, Gounod, Massenet, Poulenc, and Offenbach.
The following two audio clips from this concert are available on the Media page:
Poulenc: “Les Chemins de l’Amour” from Léocadia
Massenet: “Allons! Il le faut! pour lui même! . . . Adieu, notre petite table” from Manon
A TOUR OF NINETEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA WITH DAVID AND THE DIVAS Wednesday, August 6, 2014
The title says it all. This concert included music by Puccini, Verdi, Mascagni and Catalani. And the flier featured a really cute opera cat!
Video of Puccini’s “Si. Mi chiamano Mimì” from La Bohème
is available on the Media page.
BETTER THAN IT SOUNDS — Tuesday, October 22, 2013
A somewhat humorous look at the commanding music of Wagner and his composer “frenemies.”
BETTER THAN IT SOUNDS
A Somewhat Humorous Look at the Music of Wagner and His Composer “Frenemies”
Tuesday August 13, 2013
This concert featured the music of Wagner (of course), Strauss, Verdi, Massenet, Rossini, Gounod and Humperdinck.
TRAVELOGUE: EASTERN EUROPE — Sunday September 23, 2012
BRAVO Alliance of Performing Artists highlighted music by Eastern European composers Rachmaninoff, Tchaikowsky, Lysenko, Moniuszko, Chopin, and others, on a tour through their countries and their stories, as well as, their musical contributions to the West.
ARIAS FOR SOPRANO AND FLUTE — Sunday, November 21, 2004
The soprano voice (Genya Muzyczka) and the flute (Carron Moroney) complemented each other perfectly in this concert that celebrated music written for these two instruments. The concert featured music by Bach, Mozart, Donizetti, Massenet, and others.
AN AFTERNOON CONCERT OF ARIAS AND DUETS — Sunday November 9, 2003
It’ s always a joy to sing with a friend, and so it was in this concert of arias and duets presented by Marion Gayles and Genya Muzyczka. The two friends highlighted music by Mozart, Puccini, Strauss, Massenet, Barber, and others.