Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:30 pm
Sunday, November 4, 2018 at 2:30 pm
Hemmens Cultural Center
Beethoven Fidelio Overture
R. Strauss Four Last Songs
Wagner Highlights from The Ring
Andrew Grams, conductor
Laura Wilde, soprano
Adult Price: $30/$55/$75
Youth Price: $10
*Discount Pricing available for Groups of 10 or more! Please call the Box Office at 847-888-4000 for details.
**Build Your Own Series by purchasing 4 or more Classics or Pops concerts and receive 20% off the single ticket price!
NOTEworthy Concert Facts
Titans Nov 3 & 4 Program Notes
Beethoven, Strauss & Wagner are three of the most influential German composers in history.
Ludwig Van Beethoven may be the greatest composer of all time and he was deaf when he wrote most of his music. He composed only one opera, Fidelio, and struggled with the Overture, revising it four times.
Richard Strauss, on the other hand, was known for his operas and influenced by his friend Richard Wagner. His Last Four Songs was composed when he was 84 and is considered one of the greatest works by a composer of that age.
Richard Wagner (pronounced Vagner) revolutionized opera by making the music secondary to drama and by combining musical, dramatic, visual and literary arts into a “total work of art” or Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, a series of four epic music dramas based on Germanic folktales, are the pinnacle of his holistic approach to his art.
Laura Wilde, soprano is a recent graduate of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She has sung leading roles in the Lyric’s The Ring cycle productions over the past two seasons and is praised by Opera News for her “ravishingly beautiful sound.”
Click the picture for an audio concert highlight
