Japan-RP opera season / 12th Romantic Journey / A music mosaic

Philippine Opera Company’s very first opera season in Manila, for 2006 opens with Terrence McNally’s Masterclass, a 1996 Tony Award winning play about a master class taught by opera’s grande dame, Maria Callas. Looking back on a career of triumph and sacrifice, Callas shows a vivid glimpse of her life and the price of fame. Masterclass will be followed by a modern staging of Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, an opera based on Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy. A fantasy adaptation of the fairy-tale world of Mozart’s Magic Flute with puppetry and animation will be POC’s Christmas offering.

An Evening of Puccini will topbill Philippine Opera Company’s concert series. This is a follow-up of the successful Operanow gala concert staged last September 14, 2005, which featured 28 of our leading Filipino classical singers. Operanow 2 will again feature them and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, in popular arias of Puccini. Highlight will be selections from Madame Butterfly with guest Japanese sopranos and an exciting Japanese conductor, Yasuo Shinozaki. This will be part of the 50th anniversary of Philippine-Japan Friendship Year.

Auditions for the opera and concert season were conducted by Tashimitsu Kimura and Atanaka Sato who comes from Japan. Mr. Kimura, a baritone, graduated from the U. of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna in 1970, and represented Japan at the Dusseldorf Rhine Opera House. Mr. Sato heads a Japanese production company.

Headed by Jay Glorioso, the Philippine Opera Company was founded in 1999. Managed by classical singers who perform at major venues in Manila and abroad, it is committed to its vision of making opera accessible to wider audiences, to developing a new generation of classical singers and audiences and to promoting opera appreciation among Filipinos by performing outreach programs throughout the country funded by POC’s outreach arm, the Friends of Philippine Opera Foundation.

Performance schedule follows: Masterclass - July 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, and 22, RCBC Plaza. Romeo and Juliet - September 14, 15, 16 & 17, CCP Little Theater, September 20, 21, 22 and 23, RCBC Plaza. Magic Flute - December 14-17 and 19-22, CCP Little Theater. Operanow 2 - July 27 and 29, CCP Main Theater.

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Eminent concert pianists-pedagogues Reynaldo G. Reyes and Ingrid Santamaria will embark on their 12th Romantic Music Journey tour, starting June 15 and ending August 10. Their two-piano performances focus on the Romantic Period (1800-1900), and the program will be preceded by a talk on the era’s background, style and best-loved concertos of romantic composers which pianists will interpret: late Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, MacDowell, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens and Tschaikovsky, and Filipino composers Buencamino and Santiago.

In the concertos, Santamaria plays on Piano 1 as the soloist; Reyes, on Piano 2 as the orchestra.

Begun as bi-annual tours in January of 2001, these educational performances have graced various venues in the country as well as several cities in Asia and the US. The 12th tour will take the pianists to schools and universities in Metro Manila, different venues in Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, and the German Embassy residence in Makati.

In the open forum following each program, Reyes and Santamaria convey the importance of classic music in daily life to listeners, not necessarily musicians.

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We have several excellent choral groups in the Philippines, and Chorus Philippines apparently aims to join them.

Chorus Philippines sang well-loved folk songs and patriotic music in a special show titled "Philippine Portraits" at Paco Park Presents last June 9. Unfortunately, I missed the performance.

According to the announcement, the show started with Kasilag’s "Purihin si Yahweh," whose text is lifted from the Book of Psalms.

Followed folk tunes from all over the country such as Chua-ay (Ifugao), Waway (Ibanag), Malinac Lay Labi (Pangasinan), and Turog Na Nonoy Ko (Bicol). The evening concluded with stirring patriotic songs - anthems of nationalism from various view points in Philippine history.

Founded in 2002 by Joy T. Nilo, Chorus Philippines is composed of church choristers, nurses, young professionals and music students brought together by their passion for choral music.

The choir has performed with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra under Maestro Ruggero Barbieri in its concert season at the CCP, as well as in Fr. Pedro Galende’s annual San Agustin International Music Festival.

Chorus Philippines is currently recording its first CD album of Filipino folk and contemporary songs which were featured in the concert, many of them arranged by Nilo himself.

Also the group’s artistic director, Nilo did orchestrations for the Filipinescas Dance Company headed by the late National Artist for Dance Leonor Orosa-Goquingco, for the PPO and the Manila Symphony Orchestra II. He is currently working on a concerto for piano and orchestra with concert pianist Andrea Spolti for the Honolulu Philharmonic Orchestra.

The recent performance of Alejandro Consolacion in "An Evening with Mozart" at the Santuario de San Antonio proved him a master organist. His cadenza in the last of three sonatas by Mozart showed him a brilliant composer, too. The UE Chorale and the Muntinglupa Children’s Choir rendered his "Trinity Song" at the Holy Trinity Church last June 11. Excerpts of his composition "Song of the Rainbow", with libretto by Jennifer G.R. Wallum, were sung at the Bamboo Organ Festival, and I hope it will be interpreted in full later. Fr. Pedro Galende should "grab" Consolacion for his annual festivals at San Agustin Church.

A word about Wallum, MBE president-founder of the Entrepreneur Volunteer Assistance (to Aetas), she plays the double-bass.

The remarkable, young concert pianist Oliver Salonga will give a recital at the Philamlife Theater on June 25. Oliver was twice winner in the NAMCYA contests and twice winner in concerto competitions in Florida, USA. On June 25, Oliver will render Beethoven’s Sonata in A Flat Major, Prokofief’s Sonata in B Flat Major and Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat Minor.