Project 366 - Dates on the Musical Calendar for July 2020

Project 366 continues in 2019 with "Dates on the Musical Calendar". Read more here.

HIghlights

• 1-Jul       Canada Day [Guide #350]
• 4-Jul       Independence Day (USA) [Guide #351]
• 7-Jul       Happy Birthday Gustav  Mahler (Born OTD 1860) [Guide #264]
• 14-Jul    Bastille Day (France) [Guide #352]

On account of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health measures as well as continuing concern for the health and well-being of the community led organizers to the 2020 edition of the Calgary Stampede. Though it cannot be celebrated in traditional way, Stampede Spirit can’t be cancelled! In this spirit, spirit we have kept our Cowboy Classics montage on the calendar [Guide #61]

Symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Nielsen and Mahler adorn the calendar, along with two full-lengtyh operas: Dialogues of the Carmelites [Guides # 353 & 354] and L’Elisir d’Amore [Guides # 355 & 356]

Your Listener Guides

Listener Guide #350 – Canada Day

As our regular listeners will attest, scarcely a listener guide goes by without its fair share of "Canadian content". To celebrate Canada Day, we assembled a montage of music featuring Canadian compositions and performers. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 12 - July 1, 2011)

Listener Guide #351 – America

America is synonymous with migration - save for the people from the First Nations, everybody (or their ancestors) have come from elsewhere. Many of today's musical selections are indicative of travel to America, or of people that have elected to live in America. (ITYWLTMT Montage # 116 - 02 Aug, 2013)

Listener Guide #352 – Séjour musical en France

Tarbes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées, in south-western France. And it is the birthplace of French pianist Cécile Ousset, who will be our soloist in Poulenc’s Piano Concerto. In this (in my opinion) definitive performance, she is ably backed-up by Rudolf Barshai and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. (ITYWLTMTMontage #15 - July 22, 2011)

Listener Guide #353 & 354 – Dialogues des carmélites

The opera explores the drama surrounding the Carmelites of Compiegne, sixteen Carmelite nuns (cloistered) sentenced to death in July 1794 by the Revolutionary Tribunal on the grounds of "fanaticism and sedition." Arrested and convicted at the height of the Terror, they had two years earlier, vowed to give their lives to "appease the wrath of God and the divine peace that his dear Son came to bring the world." Their peaceful death on the scaffold impressed the crowd and was one of the many seminal events that put an end to this dark chapter in post-Revolutionary France. (Once or Twice a Fortnight -14 Nov 2013)

Acts 1 &2 - L/G 353, Acts 3 & 4 - L/G 354

Listener Guide #355 & 356 – L'Elisir d'Amore

L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love) is a melodramma giocoso in two acts. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's Le philtre (1831). Composed in less than a month (according to The New Grove Masters of Italian Opera) l’elisir d'amore was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848 and has remained continually in the international opera repertoire. Today it is one of the most frequently performed of Donizetti's 75 operas. (Once or Twice a Fortnight - 20 Oct 2012)

Act 1 - L/G 355, Act 2 - L/G 356