Classical Music Agenda
Matthew Worth (Tarquinius) and Tamara Mumford (Lucretia), Rape of Lucretia, Châteauville Foundation, 2007, photo by Giuseppe Di Liberto
OPERA:
>> This is the time of the summer opera festivals, and the newest kid on the block is within a moderate drive from the city. Lorin Maazel, recently retired as music director of the New York Philharmonic, will host the first-ever Castleton Festival at the Châteauville Foundation, the estate owned by Maazel and his wife in Rappahannock County, Virginia. The festival has grown out of Maazel's productions of chamber operas at Castleton Farms the last few years (for more information, see these reviews), but the venue's small theater limits the number of people who can see each performance. The chamber operas on the schedule, all by Benjamin Britten, are The Turn of the Screw (July 3 to 5), The Beggar's Opera (July 5, 12, 16, and 18), The Rape of Lucretia (July 10 to 12), and Albert Herring (July 17 to 19). Other performances of chamber music and the festival orchestra are listed on the foundation's Web site.
>> The adventurous American Opera Theater presents an adaptation of 12 songs by John Dowland, woven together into a theatrical piece called A Pilgrime's Solace, featuring mezzo-soprano Monica Reinagle and guitarist Andrew Dickenson at Baltimore Artscape (July 19, 7 p.m.).
>> At the Fringe Festival, Gregg Martin will present LIfe in Death, his one-act "opera electronica" on Poe's The Oval Portrait (July 12, 17 to 19, and 24). Also, Opera Alterna will perform Michael Oberhauser's Magnum Opus, a short opera on the Faust legend (July 9, 12, 16, 18, and 25).
>> The second opera on Wolf Trap Opera's schedule is a relative rarity, Claudio Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse. It will be performed with (mostly) historical instruments in the Barns (July 24, 26, and 28).
KEYBOARD:
>> The summer series of free organ recitals continues at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (4th St. and Michigan Ave. NE), every Sunday at 6 p.m. This month the organists include Rupert Gough (July 5, with violinist Rachel Gough), Roland Maria Stangier (July 12), Mark Shepherd (July 19), and Adam Brakel (July 26).
>> The annual Independence Day organ recital at Washington National Cathedral will feature the cathedral's organists, Scott Dettra and Christopher Jacobson (July 4, 11 a.m.).
>> The Piano Society of Greater Washington holds its next free recital (July 12, 4 p.m.) at Calvary Lutheran Church in Silver Spring.
FURTHERMORE:
>> The daring folks of the Mobtown Modern series will present a very rare performance of Mauricio Kagel's Eine Brise, a work of music created from the sounds of 111 bicyclists, in this case pedaling around a block as part of Baltimore Artscape (July 18, 3 p.m.). You can even sign up to be one of the "performers."
>> Many concert organizers are shutting down or scaling back their seasons, and this year the Washington Early Music Festival will consist of a single gala concert (July 18, 8 p.m.) at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Performers will include members of Arco Voce, Armonia Nova, Carmina, the Countertop Quartet, Ensemble Gaudior, Modern Musick, and the Suspicious Cheese Lords.
>> Out of all the popular and fairly uninteresting fare programmed by the area's orchestras for the summer, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will be offering performances of Beethoven's ninth symphony, notably conducted by Günther Herbig at Strathmore (July 23, 8 p.m.). Also in Baltimore (July 24, 8 p.m.).
>> The National Symphony Orchestra also has a couple worthwhile concerts planned for its summer home, the Filene Center at Wolf Trap: Orff's ever-popular Carmina Burana (July 23, 8:15 p.m.), a concert with violinist Sarah Chang playing the Mendelssohn concerto (July 30, 8:15 p.m.), and George Fenton's score for The Blue Planet, with large-screen projections of excerpts from the BBC program.