Medusa--UNC Memorial Hall--Friday, June 20, 8pm; Sunday, June 22, 2pm
Not Your Everyday Diva!
Pulitzer-Prize winning composer William Bolcom's Medusa is a monodrama for soprano and chamber orchestra.
A female monster in Greek Mythology known as a Gorgon, Medusa was the most famous gorgon. She was a beautiful young woman with magnificent long, silky hair. One day, while she was in Athena's temple, she fooled around with Poseidon (Neptune) which of course angered Athena. Athena was so mad she changed Medusa's beautiful hair into hissing serpents and made her into a horrible looking gorgon--so horrible that any living thing that looked upon her world turn to stone.
William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom (born
At 11, he studied composition privately with George Frederick McKay and John Verall, and piano with Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson. He later studied with Darius Milaud at Mills College while working on his Master of Arts degree, with Leland Smith at Stanford University while working on his D.M.A., and the Paris Conservatoire where he received the 2éme Prix de Composition.
Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano. In the fall of 1994 Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the
As a pianist, Bolcom has performed and recorded his own work frequently in collaboration with Joan Morris, his wife. Bolcom and Morris have recorded twenty albums together, beginning with After the Ball, a collection of popular songs from around the turn of the 20th century. Their primary specialties in both concerts and recordings are showtunes and popular songs from the early 20th century, and cabaret songs (often from failed musicals).
Bolcom's setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a three-hour work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra culminated 25 years of work on the piece. Its premiere at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984 was followed by performances in
Barbara DeMaio Caprilli as Medusa
The American Soprano Barbara DeMaio Caprilli, thanks to her gifts of interpretation, precise phrasing and complete conquest of the Italian language, has won in a very brief time a deserved international fame. Her vast repertoire includes all the great roles of a Puccini and Verdi soprano; Tosca (Palermo, Torre del Lago); Lady Macbeth (Firenze); Turandot (Genova, Torre del Lago, Cagliari, Palma de Mallorca); Aida (Caracalla, Verona, Taiwan, Avenches), Abigaille in Nabucco (Bern, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Brussels, Torino, Genova), and also Amelia Ballo in Maschera, Elvira in Ernani, Lucrezia in I Due Foscari, Leonora La Forza del Destino and Odabella in La Scala’s Attila directed by Riccardo Muti, which have given her great success in recent seasons. Her interpretation of Norma at the Teatro Carlo Fenice in Genova in 1994 consecrated her as irreplaceable interpreter of this important Bellini character, and since then she has sung the role with immense success in Bologna, Marseille, Chicago and Germany.
Barbara DeMaio Caprilli is also known for her modern repertoire, one of the most noted examples being the production of Il Caso Makropoulos in Bologna and Torino.
Among her contracts for recent seasons; Nabucco in Torino and Athens; Aida in Buenos Aires, Norma in Kassel, La Forza del Destino at the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens, Nabucco and Aida in the Arena di Verona, Nabucco at the reopening of the theatre in Prato and also in Ravenna, Fedora in Faenza, Il Corsaro in Trieste, Aida in Japan and Rome, Norma in Ascoli Piceno, Nabucco at the Speyer Festival, Turandot in Rome, Nabucco and Un Ballo in Maschera in Germany, Aida in Rovigo, Pisa and Trento, Turandot in Seoul, Korea and concerts all over Italy with the Toscanini Orchestra.