Elisabeth Olin News
singer (1740-1828)
- soprano
- opera
- Sweden
- actor, singer, opera singer, composer, stage actor
Last update
2024-03-28
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2023-08-27 19:08:19
Continuing to catch up on recent issues of American Music, I read with great interest Carol A. Hess's article "'If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!': Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties," in...
2021-03-17 23:41:00
[…] search of material.” Over the decades, the “New World” steadily grew in popularity but never shed the aura of controversy surrounding its connections to Black music. A New York Philharmonic program annotator remarked in 1940 that “Dvorak, in his enthusiasm for Negro music, overlooked the fact that there exists in our diversified population a rich heritage of folk music brought hither by white colonists.” Around the same time, Olin Downes of The New York Times called the origin and inspiration of the symphony “a question for academic argument.” For many Black musicians, though, the “New World” was galvanizing precisely because of its ties to the African diaspora. In June 1940, a little over a year after the release of Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching protest song “Strange Fruit,” Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic premiered Still’s heart-rending […]
2020-06-26 23:48:00
NPR.org: Someone Finally Remembered William Dawson's 'Negro Folk Symphony' [Ulysses Kay's "Fantasy Variations" and "Umbrian Scenes"]
[…] Negro Folk Symphony, by the 35-year-old African American composer William Dawson. He was called back to the stage several times to take bows after his symphony ended. Stokowski conducted four back-to-back performances of the piece, one of which was nationally broadcast by CBS radio. One New York critic called it "the most distinctive and promising American symphonic proclamation which has so far been achieved." Olin Downes, writing in The New York Times, noted: "This music has dramatic feeling, a racial sensuousness and directness of melodic speech." The immediate success should have made Dawson a household name and buoyed him to write more symphonic works. But after just a handful of performances over the next 18 months, the symphony inexplicably dropped off the radar, and Dawson never wrote another. After […]
2020-06-17 16:15:00
Streaming Next at San Francisco Opera
[…] Elders” from the biblical Apocrypha, centers on an innocent, teenage girl who is falsely accused as a sinner by her church community. This “brilliant,” “magnificent” (San Francisco Chronicle) 2014 Company premiere is a San Francisco Opera co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Houston Grand Opera. Director Michael Cavanagh directs the cast starring soprano Patricia Racette in the title role; tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Susannah’s brother, Sam Polk; bass Raymond Aceto as the villain, Reverend Olin Blitch; tenor James Kryshak as Little Bat and mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook as Little Bat’s mother, Mrs. McLean. In her Company debut, Karen Kamensek conducts the cast, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus “with superb musical direction” (The Mercury News). The production features set designs by Erhard Rom, costumes by Michael Yeargan, lighting designs by Gary Marder, choreography by Lawrence Pech and fight direction by Dave Maier. Susannah is performed in English with English […]
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