Strangely enough for an orchestra, we’ve heard a lot of the human voice recently at the Jacksonville Symphony. The Christmas season began with Messiah, and in January we welcomed a cast from around the country for Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Last weekend we performed Maurice Ravel’s sensuous ballet, Daphnis et Chloé, complete with an enormous chorus who sing no words, only “ah”. Next week features Verdi’s magisterial Requiem Mass, which has been described as an opera in ecclesiastical robes. All music began with singing, and for many of us, singing was the way into music. There is something primal about listening to a great singer: something more personal, vulnerable and expressive than an instrumentalist. Indeed, the greatest compliment we often give to violinists and pianists

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Mozart described his masterpiece Don Giovanni as an opera buffa: a comedy. Yet the work bristles with the political issues of the day, see-sawing between farce and deep seriousness. The Don Juan myth first appeared in European literature in 1630, when Tirso de Molina published The Trickster of Seville, a tale of an irresistibly handsome aristocrat who spends his days seducing and ruining women. Untethered by conventional morality, he escapes retribution for years until finally he is dragged into hell by the ghost of a victim. Over the coming centuries the themes of sexual power, class and privilege, male chauvinism, and, ultimately, justice appealed to artists as diverse as Molière, Byron and Richard Strauss. As in all his operas, Mozart creates characters with whom we fall in

Continue readingMozart speaks Truth to Power, today more than ever