Synopsis
The 1985 Salzburg Festival boasted a quite unusual premiere: a 17th century Venetian opera by Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi entitled Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, or The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland, as arranged and orchestrated by the contemporary German composer Hans Werner Henze.
The surviving music for Monteverdi’s opera does not exist in what we now call “full score.” Monteverdi wrote down a bare 5-part accompaniment to the vocal lines of his opera, without indicating what specific instruments he meant to play those notes. This means for any modern performance someone needs to make those decisions.
For their 1985 summer season, the Salzburg Festival commissioned Henze to prepare a new orchestration of Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses 245 years after its first performance in Venice back in 1640.
The music critics, in the main, were complimentary after Henze’s version premiered in Salzburg, noting his scoring somehow managed to sound both ancient and modern at the same time.
Even though we’ll never know exactly how the opera sounded when Monteverdi heard it back in 1640, thanks to modern technology, that 1985 Salzburg performance can be sampled in both audio and video recordings.
Music Played in Today's Program
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) arr. Hans Werner Henze: Ulysses’ Homecoming; soloists; Vienna Radio Symphony; Jeffrey Tate, conductor; Orfeo 528 003
On This Day
Births
1750 - Italian opera composer Antonio Salieri, in Legnago (near Verona)
1849 - French composer Benjamin Godard, in Paris
1893 - Canadian composer and conductor Sir Ernest MacMillan, in Mimico, Ontario
Deaths
1942 - Austrian composer Erwin Schulhoff, 48, in a German concentration camp in Wülzburg
Premieres
1820 - Schubert: opera Die Zauberharfe (The Magic Harp) in Vienna
1912 - Schreker: opera Der Ferne Klang (The Distant Sound), in Frankfurt at the Opernhaus
1938 - Britten: Piano Concerto, with the composer as soloist, at a Proms Concert conducted by Sir Henry Wood
1956 - Henry Brant: On the Nature of Things, for spatially grouped instruments and strings, in Bennington, Vermont
1966 - Ulysseys Kay: Markings (dedicated to the late Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld), at the Meadow Brook Music Festival in Rochester, Michigan
Others
1906 - Gustav Mahler conducts the first of two performances of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg, Austria, during a Mozart Festival that also included Mozarts Cosi fan Tutte conducted by Richard Strauss.
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.
