Beeson's 'Lizzie Borden'

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1965, Lizzie Borden premiered at the New York City Opera. The new opera by American composer Jack Beeson depicted a fictionalized version of a real-life event: a gruesome double axe-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden that occurred in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892. Andrew Borden’s daughter, Lizzie, was accused of the murder of her father and stepmother. Many at the time thought her guilty. As a famous children’s rhyme of the period put it:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

Borden was acquitted for the murders, which remained unsolved.

Beeson thought Lizzie’s story resembled the ancient Greek legend of Elektra, already the subject of a famous opera by Richard Strauss. And like Strauss’s Elekra, Beeson’s Lizzie is the central character in an angst-ridden, Freudian tale of a dangerously dysfunctional family.

Beeson said, “A lot of Lizzie Borden is very dissonant. It was even thought to be a twelve-tone piece back in 1965. There’s not a 12-tone row in it, but the agonized situation in much of Lizzie seemed to me to require that kind of music.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Jack Beeson (1921-2010): Lizzie Borden; New York City Opera; Anton Coppola, conductor; CRI 694

On This Day

Births

• 1699 - German opera composer Johann Hasse, in Bergedorf, near Hamburg

• 1867 - Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, in Parma

• 1881 - Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, in Nagyszentmiklós

• 1882 - English composer Haydn Wood, in Slaithwaite

Deaths

• 1918 - French composer Claude Debussy, 55, in Paris

Premieres

• 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 182 (Himmelskönig, sei Willkommen) performed on the Feast of the Annunciation as part of Bach's first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24)

• 1725 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 1 (Wie Schön Leuchtet der Morgenstern) performed on the Feast of the Annunciation as part of Bach's second annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1724/25)

• 1734 - Handel: anthem This is the Day which the Lord hath Made (Julian date: March 14)

• 1874 - Brahms: 13 Variations on a Hungarian Song for piano, in London

• 1875 - Gilbert & Sullivan: one-act operetta Trial by Jury at the Royalty Theatre in London

• 1879 - Dvorak: Symphony No. 5, in Prague

• 1881 - Dvorák: Symphony No. 6, with Prague Philharmonic, Adolf Cech conducting

• 1939 - Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5 for soprano and eight cellos, in Rio de Janeiro

• 1943 - Edward Joseph Collins: Piano Concerto No. 3, by the Chicago Symphony with Frederick Stock conducting and the composer as soloist

• 1946 - Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with the Woody Herman orchestra conducted by Walter Hendl

• 1960 - Elliott Carter: String Quartet No. 2, in New York City, by the Juilliard String Quartet

• 1965 - Jack Beeson: opera Lizzie Borden, in New York City

Others

• 1938 - American premiere of Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf, by the Boston Symphony, conducted by the composer;

• 1949 - Shostakovich (accompanied by KGB “handlers”) arrives in New York for his first visit to America, for the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His anti-Western statements and criticism of Igor Stravinsky embarrassed his American sponsors, including Aaron Copland, and later provided political fodder for the notorious Red-hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy.