BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
"When I first came here to Cincinnati, I never imagined that I would have a 20th anniversary here. And now, I can't imagine what my life would have been without it," James Conlon says.
In his 20th season as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, Mr. Conlon is planning a tribute to the 20th century - including 20 festival premieres. The celebration will include an extra evening featuring the United States premiere of "Prophets," a dramatic pageant by Kurt Weill.
"I asked myself what I wanted to do on my 20th," Mr. Conlon, 48, says by phone from Paris, where he is principal conductor of the Paris Opera. "I thought the most appropriate thing to do was to do what the May Festival does best, finding wonderful choral works and works people don't necessarily know, and making a tribute as a goodbye present to the century."
The 1,000-seat Isaac M. Wise Temple on Plum Street, a new venue for the May Festival, will be the setting for "Prophets," Act IV of Mr. Weill's The Eternal Road. The special concert will be May 12 or 13, before the 126th season opens May 14.
"The whole story fascinates me," says Mr. Conlon, who had tried unsuccessfully to get permission from publishers to mount the entire, four-act spectacle, a biblical history of the Jews.
"Most of all I am very happy that we got the agreement . . . to perform 'Prophets,' which I think is of historic importance, and in a temple with great historical significance in the United States, not just in Cincinnati."
More of a pageant
Concert staging of the 45-minute work (in English) will be by Weill expert Jonathan Eaton, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music professor. It is the first performance of this version of "Prophets" in the United States.
"The material is essentially dramatic, with lengthy sections of spoken text," Mr. Eaton says. "It's more of a pageant than an oratorio. It's not high-brow listening, it's theater music." Besides "Prophets," Mr. Conlon will conduct the opening weekend concerts in Music Hall as well as the intimate Sunday concert in Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington.
America's choral icon Robert Shaw, a frequent guest conductor since 1965, will return to open the second weekend, May 21.
Concluding the festival and celebrating his 10th season as director of choruses, Robert Porco will conduct an "Italian Night" on May 22.
On opening night, chorus alumni (who have sung since maestro Conlon's 1979 appointment) are invited back to sing in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) and Ives' They are There! (A War Song March).
Soloists include American soprano Benita Valente in Mahler's Second Symphony (May 14), the work in which she made her Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra debut in 1961 under Max Rudolf. She will perform Earl Kim's Where Grief Slumbers, which she has sung with the CSO (1986) and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (1996).
Returning festival favorites include mezzo-soprano Florence Quivar, tenor John Aler, bass John Cheek and tenor Thomas Baresel. Soprano Ruth Falcon, who sang the title role in Act II of Turandot last season, will return for Act III. (Act I was performed in 1997.) Montreal soprano Dominique Labelle (who sang with the CSO in 1996), baritone James Michael McGuire, baritone Victor Ledbetter and soprano Paula Delligatti will make their festival debuts, and CCM opera director Mr. Eaton will narrate A Survivor from Warsaw (May 15).
1999 May Festival concert schedule
Historic temple will be adapted for Weill's 'Prophets'
