BMOP ends its season on a new note

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff  |  May 21, 2004

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project closes its season tonight with music by what it bills as "the next generation of prominent American composers."

Conductor Gil Rose explains, "They are all in their 40s, and they are all almost completely established." They are not yet household names like John Adams or John Harbison, but Rose thinks they are "the next torchbearers -- in the new-music world, everyone already knows them." And BMOP's mission is to carry new music beyond new-music circles. (The concert is in Jordan Hall at 8 p.m.; a preconcert lecture begins at 7 p.m.)

Rose began planning the program with an early piece (1989) by the ensemble's composer in residence, Elena Ruehr. Then a commission fell into place for a new work by Evan Ziporyn. His other choices were David Rakowski, Augusta Read Thomas, and, from the West Coast, Stephen Hartke.

"They are all different from each other," Rose points out. "Elena is a minimalist; Rakowski and Thomas are the modernists in the crowd. Evan's piece is very theatrical, full of humor, bold in statement and in conception. Hartke is such a chameleon that it's hard to pin him down, but this piece, a clarinet concerto, is very Stravinsky-like."

Two virtuoso soloists appear on the program. Richard Stoltzman plays the Hartke concerto, "Landscape With Blues," written for him in 2001. And pianist Ursula Oppens plays "Aurora," which Thomas wrote for Daniel Barenboim to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2000.

Ruehr says she composed her piece, "Sky Above Clouds," when she was at "the ripe old age of 23. It was begun as my master's thesis at Juilliard and developed into my PhD piece -- I was a student pushing against the aesthetic that was coming down from my instructors. The title and inspiration come from a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe in the Chicago Art Institute. It has a big pink-and-blue background with white clouds that repeat, but the repeating images are different in detail. My musical repeating images, or cycles, define everything -- the harmony, the melodic lines, the rhythmic placement. There is a kind of kinship with the music of John Adams, but at the time I didn't know his music."

`Mefistofele' returns: Arrigo Boito's opera "Mefistofele" is "a sonic spectacular with a cast of thousands," says Jeffrey Rink, who will lead a concert performance of the work Sunday afternoon in Jordan Hall. "It's got a huge chorus [the Chorus pro Musica], children's choruses [85 youths from the Treble Chorus of New England and the New England Conservatory Children's Chorus], and offstage brass. The Prologue takes place in heaven, and it's a quadrophonic experience."

Boito is better known as the librettist of Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff" than as a composer. "Mefistofele" (1868) is the only opera he completed; he labored for 56 years on its successor, "Nerone," without ever finishing it. "Mefistofele" was performed here a few times in the early years of the 20th century, and the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin sang it in the old Boston Opera House in 1924. But the only complete performance since then was by the Boston Concert Opera under David Stockton back in the 1980s.

Elsewhere, the work has survived on the fringes of the repertoire whenever a star bass insisted on it; the soprano aria "L'altra notte" remains a popular audition and recital number.

" I sang in a production of `Mefistofele' years ago," Rink recalls. "It was the New York City Opera on tour, and Norman Treigle was the Mefistofele; he moved like an acrobat. That is what first got me excited about the piece."

Rink is very excited by the cast he has lined up for Sunday's performance (in Jordan Hall, 3 p.m.). Soprano Michele Capalbo sings Margherita and Helen of Troy. "She sang Tosca for us at the Newton Symphony a couple of years ago and had a big success with the same opera at the City Opera this season. Our Faust, Allan Glassman, sang Otello for us a few years ago and just made news as Herod in `Salome' opposite Karita Mattila at the Metropolitan Opera -- he stepped in for Siegfried Jerusalem, who got sick, and earned wonderful reviews for himself. Mefisto, Raymond Aceto, is an exciting young bass from the Met; I know he's sung the Prologue, but this may be his first try at the whole shooting match. And there are good Boston people in all the other roles -- Gale Fuller, Mark Nemeskal, Danute Mileika, and Jason McStoots. Some of the opera may be over the top, but it is full of memorable and beautiful moments."

Film note: "The Turandot Project," a documentary about the staging of Puccini's "Turandot" in Beijing's Forbidden City, returns to the screen of the Coolidge Corner Theatre Sunday at noon. 

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