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Reproduces the script from program five of KBYU-FM Radio's six-part radio series titled \"Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the Art of Song,\" noting that the programs are being broadcast on public radio stations in celebration of the career of the singer. Examines the German art songs of Hugo Wolf through performances of Fischer-Dieskau and explores the contribution that Wolf has made in the tradition of German art song and how Fischer-Dieskau's career has helped keep that tradition alive. Provides commentary by Fischer-Dieskau and conductor and critic Will Crutchfield.

Presents the text version of a radio program aired on KBYU-FM, a classical music public radio station at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Discusses Franz Schubert's song cycle, \"Winterreise,\" which is a series of ruminations by a solitary man sinking into despair. Contends that the singer's challenge is to take on the role of this man, telling his innermost thoughts persuasively in song. Includes commentary by critic George Jellinek and critic and conductor Will Crutchfield, and reprints the text of three poems written by Welsh poet Leslie Norris, which were read during the radio program.

Presents a discussion transcribed from a radio program on KBYU-FM, a classical music public radio station at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Includes comments by poet Leslie Norris, conductor and critic Will Crutchfield, and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Notes that one reason the match between Schumann and Heine is so perfect is their ironic sensibility. Indicates that according to Crutchfield, Fischer-Dieskau catches the quality of heartbreak in the poetry of Schumann's music, but notes that the baritone also has an element that had not been there before, which was Heine's sardonic, even openly neurotic side.

\"[Simon Boccanegra]\" is [GIUSEPPE VERDI]'s most radical reworking of all. An entire episode was added to the original story, the Council Chamber scene, which becomes the highlight of the work and ushers in the force, economy and harmonic resource of \"Otello.\" In some ways it was a sketch, or a stretching of the compositional muscles, for \"Otello.\" Verdi had not composed for the theater in a decade, and seemed to have ceased altogether after the Requiem in 1874. The librettist for the revisions was Arrigo Boito, whose collaboration with Verdi the Ricordis had carefully nurtured and who was already involved in drafting the text for the Shakespearean masterpiece that followed in 1887. The Simon and Gabriele of that Scala \"Boccanegra\" production, Victor Maurel and Francesco Tamagno, would become Iago and Otello. The \"Boccanegra\" of 1857 was a sad work in dark, rich browns and reds. A story of blood rivalries rending 14th-century Genoa, it touched Verdi's deep, often pessimistic feeling for Italy's history and present. The reunion of a father with a long-lost daughter kindled responses of ecstatic tenderness; we are now likely to hear in them a hopeless fantasy of reconciliation with the daughter Verdi and his mistress Giuseppina Strepponi seem to have abandoned to charity adoption in 1851. Musical ideas that had figured prominently in \"Il Trovatore\" and \"La Traviata\" are carried farther and enriched. Nothing is allowed to compromise the prevailing tone: the love music, which flowed with brilliance or tragic passion or sweetness in the operas just before and after, is here kept muted; in each happy moment one senses the sadness that waits to break upon it. In some works -- \"La Traviata,\" \"Rigoletto,\" \"Aida\" and the Shakespeare operas -- the situations move rapidly and cohere magnificently. In others -- \"Il Trovatore,\" \"I Vespri Siciliani,\" \"La Forza del Destino\" and \"Don Carlo\" among the mature works -- it is not clear what the overall story meant to the composer; what mattered were certain themes that ran through them and the situations for which he could imagine so much musical force. (In this he is the opposite of Wagner, for whom the overall story is always the point and no development can be slighted.) \"Boccanegra\" belongs to that second group: the situations are terrific and moving, but it's darned difficult to know what is going on.

Most people have felt close enough to one or the other of these roles (or both) to feel the power of a story that plays them out to the extreme. It is a dangerous story; that is why \"Carmen,\" which expounds it with such musical potency, was considered a shocking opera at its premiere in 1875. \"Carmen\" is back at the City Opera; no news. \"Carmen\" will always be back. It is one of the very few indispensable operas. Every new treatment (or hearing) stands the chance of uncovering a fresh perspective. The one moment when we see Carmen psychologically \"alone\" -- in one of her brief moments between fantasy love-objects -- there is an appalling blankness. This is her single moment of private musical expression; it comes in the middle of a trio, the most original piece in the opera. The Gypsy girls read the cards for their future; Carmen turns up the combination that means death, and she accepts it coolly. Her solo is all somber restraint. The vocal line moves in short, even notes; it is pitched in such a way that no grand vocal climaxes, high or low, are possible; [Bizet]'s telling instruction is \"egal.\" There is no point in fighting it, she says; there is no point even in asking the cards again: Fate controls. When death comes, you accept. What redeems Carmen? She doesn't need it. Would we like to think of her as secretly empty and miserable? Don't look to Bizet; he is far too much an artist to impose a comment. Here is something I've seen, he says, that may remind you of life. Those to whom Carmen's choice is available (that is, who have sufficient sex appeal and remorselessness) do rather often choose it. Carmen in her songs is so alive, she so resounds with the vibration of her moments, that we do not recoil from her nihilism but are fascinated. Maybe she's got it right. We'll always wonder.

Will Crutchfield, an opera conductor, teacher and critic, is to give an interdisciplinary lecture on \"Impressionism: Art and Music,\" at the Metropolitan...

George Bernard Shaw's Oscar-winning screenplay for the wonderful 1938 film of his \"Pygmalion\" included several new scenes, among them the \"cuddly coda\" that Will Crutchfield tries to hang on Alan Jay Lerner's script for \"My Fair Lady\" [ \"...

''Madama Butterfly'' is one of the works with which the New York City Opera has felt most at home in recent seasons. The story is so affecting and direct that no one has been tempted to trick it up with added luridness; the company's young singers have often been able to find their way to the hearts of the characters; the orchestra plays Puccini better than Verdi or Mozart; the opera works theatrically even if, say, the small-part singers mug and exaggerate instead of playing in character. Sunday afternoon's performance (the first of the season) conveyed the drama movingly; surely no eye was dry when Butterfly brought out her little boy, Trouble, in heartbreaking triumph in Act II. The production still features one example of what has become a bad habit at the City Opera (and not just there): the introduction of silent extra characters, presumably to add ''action,'' but in effect to distract, confuse and bore. In this case it's the three stooges Pinkerton brings along with him to examine the house in Act I. Christopher Keene could do no end of good by asserting the general director's right to delete such things from a stage director's work, and going through the house's standard repertory doing just that.

This was by no means the most elegant early-instrument playing one has heard; America has some catching up to do in the training and support of players and the band engaged for ''The Marriage of Figaro'' was only partly composed of the best players available. There was plenty of questionable intonation and some sketchy technique. But even at that, the score sounded markedly better than it usually does. Balance problems, whether within the orchestra or between orchestra and the stage, simply vanished. The timbres were delightful; the clarity of counterpoint was revelatory; the big climaxes were stirring without ever eclipsing the voices. Michael Pratt conducted with thoughtful consideration for recent musicological literature on ''Figaro'' and set apt tempos on the whole, but more character and detail in phrasing was needed. (So were more appoggiaturas, though the New Jersey group sang more than most performances offer, and more ornamentation at the places where Mozart requested it with a fermata.) Nagle Jackson's direction and John Hensen's sets were good without being special.