Opera Review: Fireworks Over Jerusalem

A concert Rinaldo strikes sparks at the Kaufman Center
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Armida falls in love with Rinaldo. Rinaldo and Armida, painting by Nicolas Poussin 1629

The 39 operas written by Georg Friederich Handel are a trove of great music that has only recently been explored by modern listeners. It is the ambition of conductor and harpsichordist Jennifer Peterson and her company operamission to correct that. Last week, at the Merkin Concert Hall, operamission presented their most ambitious show yet. This was a concert performance of Handel's fourth opera Rinaldo with a period instrument orchestra and an impressive cast. The work was presented complete and in concert, with the audience supplied with xeroxed librettos and plot summaries of the extensive recitatives.

Concert Review: He Died For His Art

The Ullmann Project launches at Merkin Concert Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Doomed genius: Viktor Ullmann in 1924.

Image © The Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna.

Some composers are remembered more for the circumstances of their demise rather than the extraordinary achievements of their respective lives. Of those, Viktor Ullmann stands out. A songwriter, a piano composer and a creator of opera, he looked death in the face and laughed, creating the anti-Nazi opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis while interred in the Theresienstadt prison camp from 1941 to 1944. A fairy tale where Death takes a much-needed vacation in the face of total war, it was quickly banned. Ullmann was then killed at Auschwitz.