The Easter season ushers in one of our biannual masterworks Tapestry series! This year, our EASTER TAPESTRY: QUEST (Wed 1300-1500, further airing Sat 1900-2100), takes us to lands of fantasy and fable, myth and allegory, over seven weeks from April 7 to May 22.
It begins at the end of the world — or the farthest west mythology’s Hercules ever reached, that is, Iberia. Manuel de Falla’s Atlantida, which lay unfinished at his death, sets text by Catalan poet Jacint Verdaguer, and encompasses the destruction of Atlantis as well as Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the New World, the week of April 7.
A milder Hercules is at the center of JS Bach’s secular cantata Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen (Hercules at the Crossroads), BWV 213. This quest for highest virtue is paired with Johannes Brahms’ little-known cantata Rinaldo, based on Tasso’s poetic epic on the deliverance of Jerusalem, the week of April 14.
Indeed Hercules is an inspiration for the knight Orlando, who sees that love and valor can coexist. The knight of Charlemagne pursues a princess from Cathay, who loves another, and the magician Zoroastro must intervene. Handel’s Orlando, the week of April 21.
Mythology’s Penelope is the protagonist of Gabriel Faure’s opera which bears her name. The travails she undergoes to remain faithful to her beloved Ulysses unfold the week of April 28.
The Saxon King Oswald of Kent has abducted the blind Cornish Princess Emmeline, and King Arthur sets out to recover his fiancée in Henry Purcell’s King Arthur, the week of May 5.
Alchemy is the means but love is the end in the collaborative singspiel The Philosopher’s Stone, composed by a team of collaborators — including Mozart. The two-act fairy tale singspiel features the week of May 12.
Our EASTER TAPESTRY closes with another fairy tale: A story about a rose who has been turned into a human being in order to experience the many emotions of human existence, including fear, faith, romantic faith and motherhood. Robert Schumann’s Pilgrimage of the Rose is our centerpiece the week of May 19.
DZFE’s Tiffany presents.