Here - Tyalgum Festival of Classical Music

'Care Selve' from Atalanta
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Atalanta was composed in honour of the wedding between Prince Frederick of Wales and the Princess of Saxe-Gotha. The
opera is a pastoral work crowned with the spectacle of the god Mercury descending from the heavens as a messenger of Jove
to honour the newlyweds. The speech he gives the couple in the opera was written to honour the Prince of Wales and his new
spouse. The climax celebrates the wedding of Atalanta, the Princess of Arcadia, and the King of Etolia. Here trumpets blare,
drums are beaten, and fireworks and bonfires are lit. The work was deeply appreciated by the prince, who forthwith
abandoned his Opera of the Nobility and reinstated his father's favourite as his own best composer.
'Ah! Fuyez, douce image' from Manon
Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
Manon (1884) is Massenet's most popular and famous work and a veritable paradigm of French opera. Based on L'histoire du
chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost, it follows the original more closely than most other operas on
the same topic.
It tells the tale of two adolescents – an attractive young girl on her way to a convent and a provincial nobleman who has fallen
madly in love with her – who elope to Paris, where life's harsh realities uncover their true characters. Manon is ambitious and
yearns for comfort and luxury to the point of betraying her lover and prostituting herself. The weak, ingenuous Des Grieux, on
the other hand, falls into a milieu of gambling and violence. In the novel Manon is deported to Louisiana and dies there in the
arms of her repentant lover; in the opera this episode is reduced to Des Grieux' bid to free her on the quayside at Le Havre,
where she expires from exhaustion.
Massenet skillfully translates the different social groups and variegated atmospheres of Manon into music, depicting each with
the appropriate colour. The form of the opéra-comique offers him a multiplicity of styles and manners – speech and song,
recitative and arioso, Neo-classicism and Romantic expressiveness – which fragment the work and make it unusually
attractive.
'Serenade' from The Student Prince
Sigmund Romberg (1887-1951)
The Student Prince, a musical play with book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelley and music by Sigmund Romberg, remains one
of America's all-time musical theatre classics. The musical opened in New York City's Jolson Theater on 2 December 1924,
and ran for six hundred and eight performances. After that, it toured extensively throughout the United States, and even
entered the international repertoire.
The story is singular in the history of the early American theater, for it offers the audience no happy ending or fanfare
conclusion; instead of dancing girls and light hearted comedy, it uses an all-male chorus of Heidelberg University students.
Romberg filled the musical with memorable tunes, including both romantic ballads and vigorous set pieces. A poignant
youthful romance, a university setting in Old Heidelberg, royalty and humbleness, all gave Romberg food for musical variety
and inventiveness. 'Golden Days', 'Drinking Song' and 'Serenade’ are just a few songs of enduring popularity. The Student
Prince is perhaps Romberg's finest masterpiece.
LEFT: Jagged Rose Trio, Raphael Ebermann, violin; Ayesha Gough, piano; Julien Rosendahl, cello 2010 RIGHT: Jayson Gillham
with Ayesha Gough, winner of Tyalgum Festival Prize, Murwillumbah Festival of Performing Arts 2006
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