Berlin's Deutsche Oper gives the German premiere of Luigi Nono's 1960 opera "Intolleranza," set to texts by Brecht, Eluard, Sartre and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
The program opened with the 1864 Op. 32 cycle, a parade of intensely gloomy songs set to texts by different poets, including August von Platen.
But Czech lady librettists were common in the late 19th century, when Smetana wrote his now rarely performed "Kiss," a comedy set to texts by Eliska Krasnohorska.
His "Last Judgment," set to texts from the Book of Revelation, was enthusiastically received at its premiere but, like most of his works, is now rarely performed.
There are 36 songs set to texts by 24 authors, among them Auden, Wilde, Wordsworth, Millay, Whitman, Houseman, Jane Kenyon, Paul Goodman and William Penn, who, as Rorem, a practicing Quaker, expressed it in a program note, "speaks to my condition".
The organization Music Before 1800, featuring "Musique Varié," with 16th- and 17th-century French motets set to texts from the Old and New Testaments; Margaret Panofsky, viola de gamba; Edward Brewer, harpsichordist and organist; Louise Basbas, organist and music director.
Set to texts by C. P. Cavafy, the songs were saturated with a melancholy languor that threatened to spill over into self-pity, despite the churning string chords and percussive exclamations in the piano.
This award-winning ensemble teams up with the soprano Lucy Shelton in a performance of this modernist masterwork, paired with a newly commissioned piece by Mohammed Fairouz set to texts by Wayne Koestenbaum and sung by the tenor Timur Bekbosunov.
Fred Patella's appealing "Thérèse Songs," set to texts by the 19th-century nun St. Thérèse of Lisieux, would have benefited from stronger singing than that supplied by the soprano Janet Steele.
"The Great Learning," set to a text by Confucius about individual discipline and good governance, lasts about eight hours.
