February 2006

Jackie O
Listen to "I Am Curious (Yellow)" mp3 (requires audio plugin)
Listen to "Ay infelice de mi" mp3 (requires audio plugin)

 Jackie O

Michael Daugherty

Excerpt from the aria "I Am Curious (Yellow)," sung by the character Aristotle Onassis.

The opera Jackie O by Michael Daugherty, U-M professor composition, debuted in Houston in 1997 with a performance by the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Daugherty and lyricist Wayne Koestenbaum set the opera at an imagined gathering of Jackie Kennedy Onassis at Andy Warhol's studio in New York. The characters include Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace, Maria Callas and others, as the opera explores the media-celebrity and pop culture of the 1960s.

Jackie-O

In the scene in which "I Am Curious" is performed, Jackie O meets Onassis with his paramour Maria Callas. Ari jilts Maria and convinces Jackie to escape the party with him to see the movie I Am Curious (Yellow). For more information about Daugherty and about the Jackie O CD, see:
http://www.michaeldaugherty.net/

La Púrpura de la Rosa (The Blood of the Rose)

La Púrpura de la Rosa

Excerpt from Venus's lament, "Ay infelice de mi."
The libretto of La Púrpura de la Rosa by Calderón was first set to music in 1659 as a theatrical pageant in honor of the marriage of Louis XIV and María Teresa of Spain. The plot features gods and goddesses, love triangles, low-comedy and the triumph of love over adversity.
In Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), U-M professor of musicology Louise K. Stein writes that the work was also intended to commemorate the treaty between France and Spain, the Peace of the Pyrenees. Calderón crafted the plot for the specific political situation and marriage as "an exhortation to fidelity and caution against vengeance," Stein wrote.

After an intervening version, Calderón's libretto was set for a third time in 1701—the version heard here—by the composer Tomás Torrejón y Velasco in Lima, to celebrate the 18th birthday of the newly crowned king of Spain, Philip V. The Lima performance of La Púrpura was the first known performance of an opera in the Western Hemisphere.

The excerpt heard here features the Harp Consort directed by Andrew Lawrence-King, with Judith Malafronte in the role of Venus. The CD BMG 05472-77355-2 (1999) is available at Amazon.com. The performance is based on the critical performing edition by Professor Stein (Madrid: SGAE, 1999).