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The Schiller Institute Presents

An Evening of Schumann & Verdi

Music is political, and politics should be musical.
Join our Brooklyn Chorus and join the Renaissance.

Invitation (HTML)      (PDF)

Robert Schumann, “Myrthen”, Op. 25, complete cycle

Myrthen translations (PDF)

Michelle Fuchs, soprano
Jessica Tremblay, mezzo-soprano
Scott Mooney, tenor
John Sigerson, tenor
Frank Mathis, baritone

Margaret Greenspan, piano
Margaret Scialdone, piano

Giuseppi Verdi, “Va, pensiero”, from Nabucco

Saturday, February 20th, 7:00pm
Flatbush-Thompkins Congregational Church
424 E. 19th Street, Brooklyn, NY

The Schiller Institute Manhattan & Brooklyn Community Chorus

 

How do you uplift the souls of a beaten down people? How do you spark the fire that strives to create beauty in a population that is assaulted daily by the mass media?

Learn to sing in our Community Chorus which is dedicated to reviving Classical culture as a moral institution, through the performance of great works at the natural tuning pitch of A=432 Hz, as demanded by Giuseppe Verdi for the best development of the bel canto human singing voice.

Robert Schumann’s wreath of songs titled Myrthen, which he composed in February 1840 as a gift to his bride-soon-to-be Clara Wieck, in the final phases of a ferocious three-year battle against press slanders launched in an effort to denigrate his character, destroy his musical endeavors, and prevent their marriage! The songs include settings by Scottish patriot Robert Burns, and by the Schumanns’ friend Heinrich Heine, who, like Schumann, battled against the bestiality of “Romanticism.”

Listen to these songs with open ears, some of them you may have heard before, but, probably not as Schumann wanted you to hear them. This cycle of songs has some of the most famous, beautiful and sensuous songs ever written for voice and piano. But Schumann intersperses these famous Lieder with Lieder full of humor and wit. He composes a full bouquet of Lieder, a beautiful bridal bouquet, he creates beauty, but also smashes all Schwärmerei!

The Schiller Institute Manhattan and Brooklyn Community Chorus will perform “Va, pensiero,” the chorus of Hebrew slaves from Verdi’s opera Nabucco, which today remains the unofficial national anthem of Italy, and whose words were written by fellow patriot and former political prisoner Temistocle Solera (1815-1878).