November 20, 2010
Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, 8:00pm
Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite
Elizabeth Grayson, soprano
Janine Hawley, mezzo-soprano
NC Stage Company
Finzi For St. Cecilia
Scott Joiner, tenor
Asheville Symphony Chorus
Borodin Polovtsian Dances
Asheville Symphony Chorus
We have invited the talented actors of the North Carolina Stage Company to join us in November to collaborate in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s take on the Shakespeare classic: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of course the original Shakespeare and the music it inspired stand on their own, but when they are mixed as Mendelssohn intended, Puck, Titania, and an entire forest come alive in a unique and colorful way. The music is vibrant and imaginative, and you can almost picture the sparkle in Mendelssohn’s eye when he first became enchanted with this fantastical story and was inspired to write some of his best music to accompany the play. On the second half, we invite the voices of the Asheville Symphony Chorus to take center stage in Finzi’s For St. Cecilia and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. For St. Cecilia is an ode to the patron saint of music, in a sumptuous, grand English style. The Polovtsian Dances are sensuous, raucous, wild, Russian, and blazing hot. We expect this to be a most exciting evening of musical delights - one not to miss!
