Program Notes: March 19, 2006
The Heavenly LifeSo delightful are heavenly joys that we avoid earthly ones.
No worldly turmoil is heard in heaven! All live in deepest peace.
We lead the life of angels, yet are quite merry;
We dance and leap, we skip and sing; Saint Peter in heaven looks on!
Saint John gives up his little lamb; the butcher Herod catches it!
We lead a patient, innocent, lovely lamb to death!
Saint Luke slaughters the oxen with nary a thought or care.
The wine costs nothing in heaven's cellar; the little angels bake bread.
Good herbs of every description grow in heaven's garden--
Good asparagus, peas, and whatever we may want!
Heaping plates are put before us! Good apples, good pears and good grapes--
The gardeners offer them all!
If you want roebuck or rabbit, they're running around in the streets!
Should a day of fast come along, all the fish swim by with joy!
There goes Saint Peter with his net and bait, running to the heavenly pond.
Saint Martha must be the cook!No music on earth can compare with ours.
11,000 young maidens give themselves over to dancing; even Saint Ursula smiles!
Cecilia and all her relations are wonderful court musicians!
The angelic voices revive our spirits, and joy wakens in all.
For his first four symphonies, Mahler drew upon a wide variety of musical, philosophical, and literary sources, including a collection of (mostly) folk poetry from early in the 19th century entitled Des knaben Wunderhorn ("From the Youth's Magic Horn"). Mahler had originally planned to end his Third Symphony with his orchestral setting of "The Heavenly Life," composed several years earlier from a poem in the collection, an apparent folk poem that has recently been traced to a religious parody from the eighteenth century (which explains its curious inversions of many well-known religious figures!). Perhaps because the Third Symphony had already grown exceptionally long, Mahler decided instead to build a new symphony around the song, making it the finale to his Fourth Symphony (1900) and opening the work with the sleighbells and blithe sentiment that set the tone for his musical vision of "The Heavenly Life." The result is often regarded as the most Mozartian of Mahler's symphonies; yet, true to that inspirational source, all is not innocence and light. Some of the more urgent sleighbell passages warn of danger, reminding us that Mahler once planned to include "Earthly Life" (another of his Wunderhorn settings, which ends in the death of a child from hunger) as part of a six-movement scheme. Moreover, the scherzo movement was inspired by images of Death playing the fiddle; thus, Mahler instructs the violin soloist to play on a mis-tuned violin (scordatura) and originally described the movement, "Freund Hein strikes up the dance; Death bows the fiddle quite strangely and fiddles us up to heaven." If the music of Death's fiddle provides one means of access to "the heavenly life," however, the dream-like third movement provides another, more in keeping with the innocent tone that frames the symphony as a whole. The finale, in Mahler's setting, keeps its sometimes saucy humor in check with an apparently sincere sense of religious devotion, balancing the two modes within what sounds like nothing so much as a lullaby, ending in the comfort of (everlasting?) sleep.
Mozart wrote his Symphony, K. 425 for Linz in late 1783 on his way back to Vienna from Salzburg, after a much-delayed attempt to reconcile with his father after his marriage to Constanze; the couple left their infant child behind in Vienna, who died during their absence. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that this too often neglected work, cast in the usually sunny key of C Major, seems peculiarly troubled, given to sudden shifts in mood that threaten--but never quite manage--to disrupt Mozart's characteristic grace and balance. Perhaps in honor of Linz, which would later be home to Anton Bruckner before he moved to Vienna in 1868, Mozart's minuet seems occasionally to hint at the rustic Ländler as a potential substitute for the increasingly old-fashioned minuet, a substitution that would increasingly become common practice with Schubert, Bruckner, and Mahler.
Jessica Rivera, soprano
Hailed as a shining young soprano whose voice possesses shimmering clarity, Jessica Rivera was most recently lauded by the New York Times for "Nuria, Margarita's most devoted student, movingly performed by the vocally luminous young soprano Jessica Rivera." Summer 2005 she made her critically acclaimed Santa Fe Opera debut as Nuria in the World Premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. In addition to performances of the work with the Atlanta Symphony, at Lincoln Center, the Barbican London and the Ojai and Ravinia Festivals, Ms. Rivera recorded the work with Dawn Upshaw for Deutsche Grammophon. Among her upcoming engagements is Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with Chautauqua Opera, Hansel and Gretel with the Phoenix Symphony, Zerlina in Don Giovanni with the New West Symphony and works by Handel, Vivaldi and Mozart with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. During the past season she sang both Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro and Musetta in La Bohème with the Los Angeles Opera, Rusalka with Fort Worth Symphony, Micaela in Carmen with the New West Symphony, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, Sister Genovieffa in Suor Angelica and Despina in Cosi fan tutte with Opera Santa Barbara, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 4 with the Auckland Philharmonia. A regular guest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she was heard during the inaugural season of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Haydn's Die Schöpfung under Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Schumann concert with the LA Philharmonic and a 2005 Messiah. She was also a finalist of Placido Domingo's 2004 Operalia World Opera Contest.
As a member of the prestigious Los Angeles Opera Resident Artist Program, she received critical acclaim from the New York Times for creating the role of Anastasia in the world premiere of Nicholas and Alexandra. She also sang Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, as well as roles in Peter Grimes, The Queen of Spades, Lohengrin, La Traviata, The Merry Widow, Die Zauberflöte, Gianni Schicchi, Don Giovanni and Nabucco under the batons of Maestros' Domingo, Rostropovich, Nagano, Gergiev, DeMain and Ferro. Ms. Rivera has also sung Frasquita in Carmen with Opera Santa Barbara, Hero in Bèatrice et Bénédict with Opera Guild of Southern California and was an apprentice artist with The Santa Fe Opera. In concert, she has sung Poulenc's Gloria with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Annina in La Traviata at the Hollywood Bowl under John Mauceri, Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with the Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Pamina in The Magic Flute with the San Bernardino and Pacific Symphony Orchestras, and the Mozart Requiem with the Phoenix Symphony. She has also sung numerous recitals throughout the U.S., including a recent New York Recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.
Ms. Rivera holds numerous titles of distinction including Finalist awards in the 2003 Metropolitan Opera National Council, the 2002 Monte-Carlo Voice Masters Competition, the 2002 Loren L. Zachary Competition and Young Artist of the Year - First Place Winner by NATS, Los Angeles chapter. She received a Master of Music in Vocal Arts from the USC Thornton School of Music, and a BA in Music from Pepperdine University. For additional information about Ms. Rivera please visit her website at http://www.jessicarivera.com/.
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