Our 2016 Season culminates in a truly ground-breaking evening of song. We close our week as we began it: with the music of Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Dominick Argento. Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård reimagines two of Argento's seminal solo vocal cycles as multi-singer, staged works : From the Diary of Virginia Woolf & The Andrée Expedition.
From the Diary of Virginia Woolf is the work which earned Argento the Pulitzer. Premiered by Dame Janet Baker and pianist Martin Isepp at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall, Hagegård develops this for not one, but two singers (Ann Cravero, Kate Maroney, with pianist Erika Switzer). Watch as a woman walks into a bookstore and, unknowingly, becomes totally engrossed with the published diary of writer Virginia Woolf.
The Andrée Expedition was premiered in 1982 at the O'Shaugnessy Theatre in St. Paul by Håkan Hagegård himself along with pianist Thomas Schuback. It tells the story of Swedish balloonist and explorer Salomon Andrée, along with Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel in their unsuccessful and tragic attempt to navigate to the North Pole via hot air balloon. With text taken from diaries and notebooks discovered 30 years after their disappearance, it is clear why Argento described this as the "most ambitious of my song cycles." Hagegård once again takes this work originally for solo voice and gives each explorer his own voice (Tyler Duncan, Jesse Blumberg, & Alan Dunbar with pianist Tyler Wottrich), while also portraying the ship captain who found these explorer's bodies in this totally engrossing performance.
Held the new Ordway Concert Hall, this culminating concert cannot be missed!
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