Program notes

“Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” Barris/Koehler/Moll (arr. Terry)

Lawrence Brownlee

Composer Harry Barris was a pianist who also sang with the popular Rhythm Boys trio, in which one of his colleagues was the young Bing Crosby. The song’s co-lyricists were Ted Koehler, best known as a frequent lyricist for the great Broadway composer, Harold Arlen; and the lesser-known Billy Moll, who was part of the three-person creative team that gave America the hit of 1927, “I Scream, You Scream (We All Scream for Ice Cream).”

In 1931, when Barris, Koehler, and Moll were writing “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” the country was still staggering under the weight of the Great Depression. Barris’s sweet melody, combined with the unfailing optimism of the lyrics, could not have been more welcome. Bing Crosby made the song’s first recording shortly after it was written, scoring a huge success nationwide; he later recorded it three more times. Eventually “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” was taken into the repertoires of many other American popular singers, among them Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett.

“Romanza,” Maria la O, Lecuona/Galarraga

Lisette Oropesa

Cuban composer/pianist/bandleader Ernesto Lecuona, often hailed as the “Cuban Gershwin,” was an accomplished musician who had much to do with putting his native country on the musical map. In addition to 400 songs—many of which achieved huge popularity (“Malagueña,” for example)—he composed piano, orchestral, and film music. In 1942, his “Always in My Heart,” nominated for an Oscar, lost to “White Christmas.”

Among Lecuona’s many zarzuelas, his greatest success came in 1930 with Maria la O, for which his librettist was Cuban poet and playwright Gustavo Sánchez Galarraga. In this work, Gershwin-esque melodies intermingle with Cuban ones, complemented by Lecuona’s flair for operatically scaled drama. The work dives deeply into racial prejudice in Cuba. The mixed-race heroine has had multiple lovers, including a gentleman from high society. He eventually leaves for another woman, who is white. The most famous number in Maria la O, Maria’s spellbinding “Romanza,” is more often identified simply by her own name, which is repeated throughout the song. She laments the loss of her lover, who will never return: “Maria la O, you will sing no more, the time of weeping has come.”

“Amor,” Bolcom/Weinstein

Ronnita Miller

American composer William Bolcom is closely associated with Lyric, where the first three of his four operas premiered: McTeague (1992), A View from the Bridge (1999), and A Wedding (2004). Bolcom’s vast output of songs includes the 23 pieces in four volumes that he entitled Cabaret Songs, composed from 1977 to 1996. The texts are by American writer Arnold Weinstein, librettist of A View from the Bridge and co-librettist with director Robert Altman for McTeague and A Wedding. The musical character of the Cabaret Songs is marvelously varied, from rivetingly intimate, inward-looking pieces to others communicating a livelier, more upbeat mood. Among the latter is the most frequently performed of all the pieces, the gloriously witty “Amor,” in which a stranger in town is startled to discover some rather unexpected—and delightful—behavior in the inhabitants.

“Ahora hablo de gaitas,” Quant/Artel

Laureano Quant

A native of Baranquilla, Colombia, Ryan Opera Center baritone Laureano Quant grew up with the cumbia. Mexico, Argentina, and other Latin American nations have their own versions of the captivating dance, but it truly belongs to the Caribbean region of Quant’s home country. The idea of setting a poem in this musical style occurred to Quant during the pandemic, when he was doing little public performing and felt a desire to reconnect with his roots.

Cumbia songs contain stories that have been passed down through generations and are traditionally performed by a singer accompanied by four drums and a pair of gaitas, the wooden wind instruments that are essential in Colombian folk music. Quant’s “Ahora hablo de gaitas” (“Now I speak of gaitas”) combines the cumbia with a more modern harmonic language, setting a text from poet Jorge Artel, who hailed from the same region as Quant himself. The song’s text is essentially saying, “If we are just quiet enough to listen to the instruments that are in our souls, we’ll remember how those sounds make us feel.” In setting the poem, Quant has kept in mind the compound rhythms of the cumbia’s drum ensembles that he remembers so well.

“Daedalus,” Wallen (with Craig Terry extemporizations)

Ronnita Miller

The achievements of Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen have been recognized with numerous awards and honors, among them the CBE in Britain’s 2020 New Year Honours. The first Black woman to have a work performed at the BBC Proms concerts, Wallen’s compositions comprise more than 20 operas, as well as orchestral and chamber works. She is the founder of her own group, Ensemble X, with which she performs on an acclaimed CD of her music entitled The Girl in My Alphabet, released in 2002. Her book Becoming a Composer has recently been published by Faber and Faber.

Wallen wrote both music and text for “Daedalus” (1988), originally for mezzo-soprano and piano. Wallen was attracted to Greek mythology’s Daedalus, whose son, Icarus, drowned when he flew too close to the sun. The composer has noted that “I wrote this song from Daedalus’s perspective and alluded to his murder, years earlier, of Perdix, his nephew and apprentice, whose own talent for inventing threatened to overshadow that of Daedalus.”

“This Little Light of Mine,” Trad. (arr. Craig Terry)

Lawrence Brownlee and Travon D. Walker

It’s clear that this song dates from the 1920s, but the question of who actually composed the original version is uncertain. Choirs in Black churches performed the song early on, and it eventually appeared in numerous hymnals. The renowned folklorists John and Alan Lomax recorded a performance sung by a Texas prison inmate in 1934. The song was an early signature for the Civil Rights Movement, and it has been memorably sung by outstanding artists including Leontyne Price (who ended all her recitals with it), Sam Cooke, and Odetta. An audience of millions heard it on May 19, 2018, performed by the choir at the end of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meaghan Markle. Reminiscing two years later, Harry commented that the song is about “using the power we each have within us to make this world a better place."

“Ah mes amis,” La fille du régiment, Donizetti

Lawrence Brownlee

Ever since the mid-1960s, when Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti starred at London’s Covent Garden in La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment), Gaetano Donizetti’s opera has been a favorite of audiences internationally. It now enjoys a popularity nearly matching that of the composer’s two most famous comedies, L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) and Don Pasquale. The heroine, Marie, and her beloved Tonio, require not only gleaming tone and elegant style, but also irresistible personality.

Marie, whom the 21st Regiment discovered as a foundling on the battlefield, has been raised by them as their “daughter.” The soldiers insist that she can marry only one of their own, so they’re upset when she expresses interest in Tonio, a sweet young man who had previously saved her life when she was in danger on a mountain. Fortunately, Tonio decides to join the regiment, which means he now has a chance of making Marie his bride. He expresses his delight in the opera’s most familiar aria, the buoyant “Ah, mes amis.” The aria requires the tenor to leap up an octave eight times to high C—nine times if he adds another C at the end!