An die fernen Geliebten:
Monodramas by Beethoven and Jeremy Gill
Winterreise Festival
Video by Meg Saracen
Tickets
About this Program
Tuesday, December 13th 7pm
Baritone Jonathan Hays, composer/pianist Jeremy Gill, and director/actor Copeland Woodruff present two staged German-language song cycles with English subtitles. Beethoven’s An die fernen Geliebten is regarded as the first song cycle (text by Alois Isidor Jeitteles). It is narrative, and literally cyclical in that the first song returns at the end, but there is no clear “story,” only a series of related musings by a single protagonist. Gill’s Helian, setting a long poem by Georg Trakl, is built around morphing images that narrate the psychological journey of a single protagonist, which Woodruff has re-imagined as an autobiographical exploration of Trakl’s brief, tormented life.
Copeland Woodruff’s staging of Helian is much more than a simple staging of a song cycle; it is a complete re-imagining of a contemporary concert piece into wholly dramatic, quasi-autobiographical exploration of Georg Trakl’s life. Trakl was a tormented soul—he suffered from prosopagnosia (an inability to recognize faces), was a drug-addict (he died of an overdose), and almost certainly had a long-term incestuous relationship with his sister (she, too, committed suicide shortly after his death).The text of Helian, and Jeremy Gill’s setting of it, is dark and tortured, and Woodruff strives to create the inner world of the poet. Baritone Jonathan Hays sings, but also embodies the character of Helian/Trakl himself, and Woodruff and Gill (also playing piano) serve as silent actors, observing Trakl’s self-interrogation along with the audience.
JEREMY GILL
Jeremy Gillʼs music has been lauded as “vividly colored” (New York Times), “exhilarating” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and “replete with imaginative textures” (Dallas Morning News). Recent works include an oboe concerto for Dallas Symphony principal Erin Hannigan, a clarinet concerto for Christopher Grymes and the Harrisburg Symphony, and Capriccio, an hour-long string quartet for the Grammy-winning Parker Quartet. He is a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow and a 2016 recipient of the Copland House Residency Fellowship, a former Fellow of the American Opera Projectsʼ Composers & the Voice program, and in 2016 will serve as the first composer in residence with Chautauqua Opera.
COPELAND WOODRUFF
Copeland Woodruff has been on the directing and production teams of the New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Yale Opera, and Guerilla Opera (Boston). He has been on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory, Academy of Vocal Arts, Temple University, Universität Bamberg, La musica lirica (Italy) and Festival of International Opera of the Americas (Brazil). He has been a visiting faculty member of The Juilliard School, where he also directed Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land for Juilliard’s Focus Festival 2010. He has directed over 90 productions, including the 2013 world premiere of Raise the Red Lantern at the Tianqiao Theatre in Beijing. He is a proud member of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) and Actors’ Equity Association (AEA). He is the director of opera studies at Lawrence University & Conservatory of Music.
JONATHAN HAYS
Jonathan Hays has performed leading roles and concert repertoire with the Los Angeles Opera, Washington Opera, Lincoln Center Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Opera de la Colombia, Cape Town Opera, Toronto Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra. Recent engagements include the Narrator in My Friend’s Story by Martin Bresnick (International Festival of Arts and Ideas), Reverend Gryffudd in How Green Was My Valley by Roger Ames (Central City Opera), the world premiere of two song cycles by Robert Pound (Dickinson College), and Requiem by Gabriel Faure (Harrisburg Symphony). He is on the voice faculty of Dickinson College.
