Letters from Georgia is based on the letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and the work will be premiered at Eastman Theater in Rochester on 12 November and then at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on 14 November.
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts wrote the cycle especially for, and in close collaboration with, Renée Fleming using O’Keeffe’s letters, written mainly to her eventual husband Alfred Stieglitz and the artist and suffragette Anita Pollitzer.
Puts says of O’Keeffe’s writings,
I found that her letters reveal aspects of her personality one doesn’t necessarily associate with her. She could be stoic and aloof but her letters also revealed tremendous passion and longing, self-deprecating humour, and also often great sadness.
Puts, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his opera Silent Night, continues,
One of my favorite lines is one of the last, a testament to O’Keeffe’s intense patriotism and a line which I find heartbreaking and full of truth, especially for many of us today: ‘It is absurd the way I love this country.’
The performances follow another recent high-profile world premiere from Puts this past April, when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performed his tone poem The City, a work which presented a portrait of Baltimore and touched upon the Freddie Gray unrest. The New York Times said,
Mr Puts’s music was captivating from the start…a powerful statement, and the audience responded loudly, presumably recognizing the universality of the situation in contemporary America. Such raw and immediate social relevance is uncommon and important in classical music today.
On August 12, Naxos will release a new recording of Puts’ orchestral music, conducted by Marin Alsop, which includes his Symphony No. 2, which was written after 9/11.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.
I exult in the chance to purchase the complete song recitals of Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. I tired and succeeded to acquire as many “live’ on tape recitals as I possibly could. I delighted in finding the 78 rpm recordings, that featured her early freshest voice. Now, to find that Wanrers had promised to give these venues a CD package, I am grateful beyond words. I learned everything about singing, practically, from Dame Schwarzkopf. I found her to be a warm and very kind person to talk with on many, many occasions. I actually drove her from Lincoln center to Pedelson’s Music Shop on 55th St. in Manhattan on one of te hottest days on record. She gave me her “comp.” seats for that evening’s recital in the Stravinsky Festival. I sat next to her parents when they came to America and attended her Carnegie Hall recial that year. Her timbre was unique and shewas a magician with words and music. I loved her so much.