Modals
Friday, July 11
6:30 PM
Festival Napa Valley Stage at Charles Krug
Uytengsu Family Opening Night
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano
Tessa Lark, violin
Clelia Cafiero, conductor
Festival Orchestra Napa
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
“Cruda Sorte” from L'italiana in Algeri (1813)
Gordon Getty (b. 1933)
Arranged by Luna Pearl Woolf (World Premiere Arrangements)
“The Going From a World We Know” and “Beauty Crowds Me” from The White Election (1981)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
“L'amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Habanera) from Carmen (1875)
Agustín Lara (1897-1970)
“Granada” (1932)
Harold Arlen (1905-1986)/Yip Harburg (1896-1981)
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (1939)
He Zhanhao (b. 1933) and Chen Gang (b. 1935)
Butterfly Lovers Concerto (1959)
I. Adagio cantabile
II. Allegro
III. Adagio assai doloroso
IV. Pesante––Piu mosso––Duramente
V. Lagrimoso
VI. Presto resoluto
VII. Adagio cantabile
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
The Firebird Suite (1919)
I. Introduction
II. L'oiseau de feu et sa danse
III. Variation de l'oiseau de feu
IV. Rondes des princesses
V. Danse infernale du roi Kastcher
VI. Berceuse
VII. Finale
Two Songs from The White Election - Gordon Getty
The Going From a World We Know
The going from a world we know,
To one a wonder still
Is like the child’s adversity
Whose vista is a hill.
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?
Beauty Crowds Me
Beauty crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me,
But if I expire today
Let it be in sight of thee.
These two songs are from The White Election, Gordon Getty’s song cycle of 32 songs for soprano and piano, on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. “The object of The White Election is to tell Emily’s story in her own words,” writes Gordon Getty in the preface of his score.
About “The Going From a World We Know,” Getty writes, “The child here may be Emily’s nephew Gilbert, who died in 1883 aged eight. Calm and equanimity are here, but the closing question finds no answer. For the second time in the cycle there is a distant march in the treble. It is again a fife-and-drum march, fit for toy soldiers, and again it comes from paradise. A dominant-tonic strategy yields to chromatic modulations. It returns accompanied by deep pedal tones, and the song ends.”
Of the cycles penultimate song, “Beauty Crowds Me,” Getty writes, “Emily could be valedictory at any age, but this undatable poem is placed here so that it can stand as her farewell to nature. The vocal line is written in half notes against a diatonic accompaniment of broken chords.”
The songs were arranged for orchestra by Luna Pearl Woolf on the occasion of Joyce DiDonato’s opening program for Festival Napa Valley.
Opening Night is generously underwritten by the Uytengsu Family
Festival Orchestra Napa's appearance is made possible through a generous gift from Tatiana and Gerret Copeland, proprietors of Bouchaine Vineyards.
The Frost School at Festival Napa Valley is a multiyear partnership with the University of Miami, featuring The Frost School of Music faculty and students playing a lead role in the Festival’s university-level educational, chamber music, and orchestral music programming.
Joyce DiDonato appears as part of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Vocal Arts Series.
Clelia Cafiero is the 2025 Joel Revzen Conducting Prizewinner. Her appearance is sponsored in part by the Italian Cultural Institute.