Program Notes
“D’amor sull’ali rosee” from Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi. Act IV. Scene 1: Leonora plans to save the captive Manrico by promising herself to di Luna. But she plans to kill herself after she is assured Manrico is spared. As a good Catholic woman, she know that suicide will damn her soul forever, but her love for Manrico and the desire to save his life are much stronger. She sings of steeling herself for the task ahead and of the breezes sending her love onward to Manrico.
“Non mi dir” from Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart. Act II, scene 4. Donna Anna’s fiance, Don Ottavio, is upset that she is postponing their wedding because her father has been murdered. Both secretly suspect Don Giovanni. Ottavio is jealous and worried that she might be protecting Don Giovanni. She begins by defending herself against his accusations, then assures him that she loves him and is faithful.
Both arias claim the same position in Il Trovatore and Don Giovanni and serve similar purposes; they represent the tense quiet before the storm of the operas’ climatic finales.
Artists
Beverly Butrie, soprano, is a singing actress with a voice of surprising size and beauty. She recently performed Leonora in Il Trovatore with the Westside Opera Society of NYC. Bruce-Michale Gelbert of New York Q News wrote of her performance as Anina in La Sonnambula – a colorful soprano encompassing a bright high range and low register of dark, almost mezzo-soprano timbre…Butrie’s instrument took on an eerie purity… after a creamy legato, she brought the evening, punctuated by her ringing high F, to a conclusion with a brilliant “Ah! non giunge”. This past season she performed the title role of Norma with Harmony Project NYC at Carnegie Hall. She also was the soprano soloist in Mozart’s Requiem with Harmony Project NYC in April 2011.
Trumpeter Christopher Scanlon has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe, Asia, Canada, Mexico and across the United States. Scanlon is currently a member of the Miami Symphony and has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Boston Lyric Opera, Singapore Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Springfield Symphony, Vermont Symphony, New World Symphony, and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. He has performed as a soloist with the Garden State Philharmonic and recorded new music with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Callithumpian Consort. As a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center he was the recipient of the Roger Voisin Award and has also performed at Spoleto USA, Banff and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. Scanlon was a student of Mark Gould at the Manhattan School of Music, Marie Speziale at Rice University, and Thomas Rolfs at Boston University.
David A. Grunberg, dynamic and versatile conductor, violinist, and composer, is founder and director of the Spectrum Symphony of New York.
With Spectrum he commissioned and premiered Peter Alexander's concerto for violin and orchestra, with Katie Lansdale as soloist, and created other innovative programs.
David has conducted in master classes with Kenneth Kiesler and Gustav Meier, at the Conductors Institute with Harold Farberman, under Jeffrey Rink in Boston, and at the Pierre Monteux School under Michael Jinbo. From 1994 to 1998 he was Assistant Conductor of the New England Philharmonic, an orchestra awarded multiple ASCAP prizes for adventuresome programming.
Involved in education, David served as adjudicator for the American String Teachers Association (NJ), and he was Music Director, conductor and chamber music coach of the Cape and Islands Youth Symphony Orchestras (MA), who under his direction were "renown for their expertise and voracity" (Art Talks).