The concert will be sung in the original German, with projected translations.

Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert (published 1828), a setting of 24 poems by German poet Wilhelm Müller. The cycle consists of a monodrama from the point of view of the wandering protagonist. After his beloved falls for another, the grief-stricken young man steals away from town at night and follows the river and steep ways to a charcoal burner's hut, where he rests before moving on. He comes across a village, passes a crossroads, and arrives at a cemetery. Here being denied even the death, he defiantly renounces faith, then reaches a point of resignation, embodied in the final song by a derelict street musician, the only instance in the cycle in which another character is present.

The text consists of poems by Wilhelm Müller. Müller, a poet, soldier and Imperial Librarian at Dessau in Prussia (present-day east-central Germany), died in 1827 aged 32. Schubert himself died in 1828 at the age of 31, just after proof-reading the last of the cycle's songs and before their first full publication. In Winterreise Schubert raises the importance of the pianist to a role equal to that of the singer. The piano supplies rich effects in the nature imagery of the poems, the voices of the elements, the creatures and active objects, the rushing storm, the crying wind, the water under the ice, birds singing, ravens croaking, dogs baying, the rusty weathervane grating, the post horn calling, and the drone and repeated melody of the barrel organ.

Schubert's Winterreise is in effect one single dramatic monologue, lasting over an hour in performance. It is a work which is usually presented in its entirety. The intensity and the emotional inflections of the poetry are carefully built up to express the sorrows of the lover and are developed to an almost pathological degree from the first to the last note. Over the course of the cycle, grief over lost love progressively gives way to more general existential despair and resignation – the beloved is last directly mentioned only halfway into the work – and the literal winter's journey is arguably at least in part allegorical for this psychological and spiritual one. Wintry imagery of cold, darkness, and barrenness consistently serve to mirror the feelings of the isolated wanderer. The resources of intellect and interpretative power required to deliver them, in the chamber or concert hall, challenge the greatest singers.

(adapted from Wikipedia)

Baritone Suchan Kim has been performing major opera roles with Opera in Williamsburg since 2014, and has performed in several of our art song concerts, including the first where he performed Schuman's Dichterliebe and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. Pianist Peiwen Chen is based in New York City, this will be her first performance with Opera in Williamsburg

Georges Bizet's Carmen is one of the most popular operas in the world, and has been since coming out in 1875. It is now so well-known and loved that it is easy to forget that at the time, in 1875's Paris, it was unconventional and shocking. The plotline, based on a novella by Prosper Merimee, revolves around the fatal love affair between Don Jose, an officer in Seville, and Carmen, an independent gypsy woman. Performed in the original French with English supertitles, with orchestra and full costumes. Reserved seats.

Bellini's Norma is among the most celebrated examples of Italian opera of the earlier 19th Century that expresses dramatic situations and emotions through beautiful singing (bell canto). This style prevailed throughout Europe in the early 19th Century, and its best examples are at the core of the repertoire of opera in the world to our own day. The stories were typically taken from theater and literature of the day, and were cast in the distant past or far-away places; the emotions and the situations are universal and are still relevant -- the pursuit of happiness and of justice, conflicts between emotions and responsibilities, and clashes between the public and the private sphere. Norma is the high druid priestess, responsible for making decisions of war and peace and vowed to a life of celibacy. She is also the secret beloved of Pollione, the Roman commander, and the mother of his children. Now Pollione is being recalled to Rome. Will he take Norma and his children with him?