Opera Wednesday

Pierre Beaumarchais is one of the more interesting characters in classical music, or politics, or any other subject you might want to discuss.  From the always-reliable Wikipedia:  Beaumarchais "was a French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary (both French and American)."  He wrote a couple of plays that were later adapted into operas, which you might have heard of:  Le Barbier de Séville, which became Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Le Mariage de Figaro,  which Mozart made into The Marriage of Figaro.  

One of the more creative operas of recent years is John Corigliano's seldom-performed The Ghosts of Versailles, which is based on characters from the two operas, as well as Beaumarchais himself, who Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffman inserted as a character in the story.  Here is the great Marilyn Horne as "Samira the Turkish Entertainer."

Opera Wednesday

I don't know if there's any quantifiable evidence on it, but I'd suspect that no American composer's music is more associated with Thanksgiving than Aaron Copland, a great example of which is his Shaker-inspired piece "Simple Gifts."

Just for the occasion, here's a performance of that piece from a concert celebrating the centennial of Carnegie Hall, sung by the great Marilyn Horne and backed up by James Levine and the New York Philharmonic.