Join us for a special performance of “Carmina Burana”
April 5, 7:30 pm, at Portsmouth High School Auditorium — Buy Tickets!
April 6, 3:00 pm, at Exeter High School Auditorium — Buy Tickets!
Priscilla Stevens French, Conductor
Adelyn Nelson and Kathy Fink, piano
Portsmouth High School percussion ensemble
Maggie Finnegan, soprano
Neil Ferreira, tenor
Will Prapestis, baritone
Safe Haven Ballet, Lissa Curtis, Artistic Director
See below for program notes
The Soloists
GRAMMY® nominated soprano Maggie Finnegan has been hailed by Opera News for her “bright coloratura” and “finely tuned high soprano” and The Washington Post for her “silvery, pitch-perfect voice.” Maggie has performed with Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Parallele, Odyssey Opera, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the MIT Media Lab, Experiments in Opera, the Belgian National Orchestra, Andriessenfest, Vancouver Symphony, White Snake Projects, PyeongChang Winter Music Festival, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Mass Opera, New England Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Catalyst New Music, Sparks and Wiry Cries, Beth Morrison Projects and the Center for Contemporary Opera. Awards include the S&R Foundation’s 2017 Washington Award, First Place in the Washington International Competition for Voice and second place in The American Prize for Women in Opera. Please visit Maggie at maggiefinnegansoprano.com
Lauded for his “resonant clarity and vibrant expressiveness” and his “subtle and refined” singing, baritone Will Prapestis appears frequently as a soloist and ensemble member in the U.S. and Europe. He has had the pleasure of singing as a soloist and chorister with Emmanuel Music, Renaissance Men — of which he is a founding member — Boston Baroque, Carmel Bach Festival, West Virginia Symphony, Odyssey Opera, Cappella Clausura, Exsultemus, BEMF, Labyrinth Choir, Sound Icon, Upper Valley Baroque, Cantata Singers, Sound Icon, Monadnock Music Festival, Augmented, Orpheus Singers, Copley Singers, and the Fredonia College Choir. Recently, Will was a featured soloist with Emmanuel Music at Bachfest Leipzig 2024. He was a Virginia Best Adams Fellow at the 2019 Carmel Bach Festival and was also the 2019-2020 Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Fellow. Will is also a very busy bass player, thoroughly active in the Boston and New York City Pop Music scenes, performing with as many as five bands as a bass guitarist, vocalist, writer, and arranger. He is also a highly-sought session artist. Will is a native of Elmira, NY, and he earned his Bachelor of Music in Performance at SUNY Fredonia. www.renmenmusic.com
Neal Ferreira is a nationally recognized lyric tenor known for his dynamic stage presence and cultivated vocalism. Dubbed a “Boston mainstay” by the Boston Globe, he recently appeared with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project as the French Ambassador/Kruger in their Gershwin double bill Of Thee I Sing/Let ‘Em Eat Cake and with Boston Lyric Opera as Loud Stone inMatthew Aucoin’s Eurydice, conducted by the composer. The tenor regularly sings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and returned in January 2025 as Gaston in Die tote Stadt. This summer, he will sing Spoletta in Tosca with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, under the baton of Maestro Andris Nelsons.
Mr. Ferreira’s theatrical engagements in the 2024-25 season have included Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Il Conte di Lerma in Don Carlo with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Alpheus/Ares in Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata with Odyssey Opera. On the concert stage, Ferreira appeared as the tenor soloist in Elijah with the Assabet Valley Mastersingers, Carmina Burana with Portsmouth Pro Musica & Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Boston Civic Symphony.
In a professional career spanning two decades, Ferreira has appeared with an array of companies including Florida Grand Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Colorado, Virginia Opera, Anchorage Opera, Syracuse Opera, American Repertory Theatre, Handel and Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, and Guerilla Opera. He is a proud student of internationally renowned tenor, Frank Lopardo. In addition to performing, Mr. Ferreira serves on the Voice faculty at Berklee College of Music.
Program Notes
By Priscilla Stevens French
Fortune Rota Volvitur Descendo Minoratus Alter in Altum Tollitur Nimis Exaltatus. “The wheel of fortune turns. I descend diminished, another is raised up, exalted too high.”
So begins (and concludes) Carl Orff’s most famous work. In 1934, German composer Carl Orff found an 1847 edition of the Carmina Burana (songs of Beuern) created by Johann Andreas Schmeller. Carmina Burana is the first part of a trilogy which also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite, known collectively as Trionfi (triumph). Schmeller had discovered a manuscript of 254 medieval poems in the monastery of Benediktbeuren. The 11th and 12th century poetry was of a bawdy, irreverent nature penned by a group of nomadic clergy known as “goliards” (student poets given to writing satirical Latin verse about convivial living and debauchery). Orff chose twenty-four poems in the languages of medieval Latin and Middle High German, creating a wildly popular one-hour theatrical cantata. The writing ranges from chant-like melodies, songs with verses to accompaniment with primitive ostinato rhythms. Please follow Texts and Translations in your program!
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi is the introduction to the themes of trickery, deceit and the ephemeral nature of life. In I. Primo Vere (Springtime), the baritone soloist, a lonely, pathetic soul, dreams of finding love while being warned about the torture of the wheel. The awakening of Spring then emerges in texts about flowers, fields and warmth. Uf dem Anger (on the Green) begins with an instrumental dance. Young women sing flirtatiously of unrequited love (“Where is my old lover? He rode away on his horse”).
II. In Taberna (in the Tavern) for men’s voices describes a scene and life style of wenching, gaming and drinking. The baritone soloist has moved from feeling bereft to now being consumed with rage and bitterness, drifting and caught up in vice and voluptuous pleasure. A silly lament is performed by the tenor soloist who, once a beautiful swan, has been transformed into a pitiful roast on a serving dish. The baritone returns as a drunk abbot mocking monastic life.
III. Cour d’amours (court of love). Boy meets girl and love is in the air! The baritone weeps at the sound of maidens in a falsetto (to depict suffering) until the young soprano soloist enters the stage. The couple is seized with desire, and the soprano reaches a high D with the consummation of love.
“Ave formosissima” is a hymn to female beauty and purity. It celebrates Blanzifor and Helena as embodying the shining ideal of virginity. Blanziflor (“white flower”, representing purity) was the heroine of a popular medieval romance, “Floire et Blancheflor.” In Homer’s “Iliad”, Helena, famous for her beauty, was abducted by Paris, the act that led to the Trojan War. Finally Venus is invoked right before reprising the opening number on the fickleness of fortune.
There are many possible influences on Carl Orff’s writing of Carmina Burana. Orff was born to Roman Catholic parents in Munich in 1895 and studied at the Munich Academy of Music. In 1917 he entered the German army at the outset of World War I where he was severely injured and nearly killed when a trench caved in. He suffered amnesia, aphasia, and paralysis on the left side. In the mid-1920s Orff formulated a concept of “elemental music” based on the unity of the arts – tone, dance, poetry, image, theatrical gesture. He was influenced by Stravinky’s opera Les Noces – an earthy folksy depiction of Russian peasant wedding rites. Orff co-founded the Gunther-Schule for gymnastics, dance and music in Munich and developed theories of music education, publishing Schulwerk (school work) in 1930. Although the premiere of Carmina Burana occurred in 1937 in Frankfurt, Orff never joined the Nazi Party or was involved with the Third Reich. Renowned as a composer and music educator, he is buried in the Benedictine priory of Andechs southwest of Munich.
Click here for a summary of the piece suitable for children.