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cover: Paul Stevenson Oles, Sketch ofthe East Building Exterior, 1971,

National Gallery ofArt Archives, Gift of I. M. Pei and Partners

The Seventy-first Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

National Gallery ofArt

2,952nd Concert

Inscape Chamber Orchestra

Richard Scerbo, artistic director

with

Jason Lee and J Austin Bitner, tenors

James Rogers and Matthew J. Minor, baritones

Madelyn Wanner, mezzo-soprano

June 2, 2013

Sunday, 6:30 pm

East Building Auditorium

Admissionfree
Program

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

El corregidor y la molinera

(The Magistrate and the Miller’s Wife): Pantomime in two tableaux (1917)

Tableau 1

El mirlo (The Blackbird)

Los celos (Envy)

El cortejo (The Courtship)

El fandango. Danza de la molinera (Fandango. Dance ofthe

Miller’s Wife)

El corregidor (The Magistrate)

Las uvas (The Grapes)

Fandango y final (Fandango and Finale)

Tableau 11

La cena. Seguidillas (Dinner. Dancing ofthe Neighbors)

La espera galante (The Miller Entertains the Guests)

Los alguaciles (The Sheriffs)

La copia del cuco (Imitation ofthe Cuckoo)

El corregidor (The Magistrate)

El chapuzon (The Dive into the River)

El asalto (The Attack)

El alguacil (The Sheriff)

El molinero (The Miller)

Tambien la corregidora es guapa (The Magistrate’s Wife

is also Beautiful)

La pelea final (The Final Battle)

INTERMISSION

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Renard: Histoire burlesque chantee etjouee, (The Fox: Burlesque tale sung

and played) (1916)

Sponsored in part by the Billy Rose Foundation

The Musicians

INSCAPE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Founded in 2004 by Artistic Director Richard Scerbo, Inscape performs concerts that aim to engage audiences and provide a compelling way to explore 

both standard and non-standard works. With a flexible roster ofmusicians,

the orchestra’s programs explore a variety ofstyles. Inscape’s energetic concerts are well-established in the Washington metropolitan area, and continue to garner praise from audiences and critics alike. The ensemble has

commissioned and premiered over twenty new works. Inscape members

regularly perform with the Delaware, National, Philadelphia, Richmond,

and Virginia symphony orchestras and the Washington Opera Orchestra,

and are members ofthe premiere Washington service bands. Inscape performs as the ensemble-in-residence at the Episcopal Church ofthe Redeemer

in Bethesda, Maryland, as well as at the National Gallery ofArt, Strathmore

Music Center, and other local and national venues. The group records exclusively for Sono Luminus.

RICHARD SCERBO

Richard Scerbo made his operatic debut in 2003 conducting A Water Bird

Talk with the Philharmonia Ensemble, the orchestra he cofounded as a

student at the University of Maryland. That same year he conducted Igor

Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. 

A graduate ofthe University of Maryland, Scerbo has attended conducting

programs in Austria and the Czech Republic. He is the associate artistic

director and general manager ofthe National Orchestral Institute, and serves

concurrently as assistant director for artistic planning and operations at the

University ofMaryland School of Music.

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Performing with the Inscape Chamber Orchestra in tonight’s concert are:

Susanna Loewy, flute and piccolo

Bethany Slater, oboe and English horn

Evan Ross Solomon, clarinet

Benjamin Greanya, bassoon

Mark Wakefield and Margaret Tung, horn

Brandon Almagro, trumpet

Rebecca Racusin, Sarah D’Angelo, Sonya Chung, and Minsun Choi, violin

Megan Yanik and Bryce Bunner, viola

Kacy Clopton and Doug Jameson, cello

David George, bass

Hyojin Ahn, piano

John Patton and Paul Keesling, percussion

JASON LEE

Regarded by his peers as a committed and elegant performer, tenor Jason

Lee’s recent roles include l’Amante (Amelia al ballo), Nanki-Poo (The Mikado),

Raymond Pocket (Miss Havisham’s Fire), Mr. Owen (Postcardfrom Morocco),

and Tamino (Die Zauberfote). In addition to opera, he has also been featured

as tenor soloist in Argento’s Songs to be Sung upon the Water, Handel’s Messiah,

Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Obadiah), and Mozart’s Requiem. A featured recitalist 

at the Art ofArgento festival and the DC Arts Club, Lee is the recipient ofmusic 

degrees from the University of Maryland and the Eastman School of Music.

J AUSTIN BITNER

Hailed for his vivid and memorable performances, tenor J Austin Bitner sings

regularly with the Washington National Opera, where he has performed roles

in The Consul, OfMice and Men, La Traviata, and I Vespri siciliani in addition 

to his seasonal work as a chorus member. Residing in Baltimore, Bitner

performs regularly throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with the Annapolis 

Chorale, Anne Arundel Community Opera, Pantolites, and Young Victorian

Theatre as well as Lyric Opera Baltimore, Opera Carolina, Spoleto Festival

Opera, and Summer Opera, DC.

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MATTHEW JOSEPH MINOR

A native ofWashington, DC, bass-baritone Matthew Joseph Minor recently

performed the role ofthe Corporal in the Washington National Opera’s

production of Donizetti’s La Fille du regiment. In 2003 he toured Japan with 

the Washington National Opera, performing in productions of Otello, Sly,

and Tosca. In 1995 he began a two-year world tour with the Houston Grand 

Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess. Minor made his operatic debut in 1986

as Simon in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha at the Kennedy Center.

JAMES ROGERS

DC-based James Rogers has been active in a wide range of genres. Opera roles

include the Music Master (Ariadne aufNaxos), Don Giovanni (Don Giovanni),

Lescaut (Manon), Danilo Danilowitsch (The Merry Widow), Demetrius (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Tonio (Pagliacci), Uberto (La serva padrona), Escamillo (Carmen), Sam (Trouble in Tahiti), and Albert (Werther). Rogers has performed Carmina Burana, J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Coffee Cantata,

and Handel’s Messiah and Dettingen Te Deum, as well as the requiems ofBrahms

and Faure.

MADELYN WANNER

Mezzo-soprano Madelyn Wanner has enjoyed critical acclaim for her work

on the operatic stage. Named a regional finalist in the 2012 Metropolitan 

Opera National Council Auditions, Wanner’s operatic credits include Rosina

(II barbiere di Siviglia), Carmen (Carmen), Lola (Cavalleria rusticana), Dorabella (Cosifan tutte), L’Enfant (UEnfant et les sortileges), Siebel (Faust), Prince

Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus), Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Iolanthe (Iolanthe),

and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro). Her concert credits include Handel’s

Messiah, Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de Confessore, Schubert’s Mass in A-flat

Major, and Vivaldi’s Magnificat.

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Program Notes

Sergei Diaghilev discovered Manuel de Falla’s El corregidor y la molinera

(The Magistrate and the Miller’s Wife) by chance during a trip through Madrid

with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Diaghilev commissioned Falla to 

revise the work, which would open in London with the Ballets Russes in

1919 as El sombrero de trespicos (The Three-Cornered Hat). Tonight, in honor

ofthe exhibition, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced

with Music, Inscape performs the lesser-known, original version that Diaghilev 

heard in Madrid in 1917.

Set in two scenes and scored for a modest chamber orchestra, El corregidor y la molinera relies heavily on Andalusian folk music, including the cante

jondo (deep song), which accompanies flamenco music to express sad stories,

and appears in the two songs for mezzo-soprano. Diaghilev enlisted Leonide

Massine (the Ballet Russes’ star dancer and successor to Nijinsky) and Pablo

Picasso to choreograph and design El sombrero de tres picos, respectively. While

preparing for this project, Massine drew inspiration from his flamenco lessons with Felix Fernando Garda, a dancer whom Diaghilev had discovered

in a cafe in Madrid and recruited to join the dance company.

Unfolding briskly in two scenes, El corregidor y la molinera spins a complex

web of escalating dramatic irony, involving a magistrate who becomes infatuated with a miller’s faithful wife and tries to seduce her. The first scene

revolves around an innocent prank, in which the miller decides to hide from

the magistrate while his wife dances in the window. She offers grapes to the

magistrate before the miller leaps out and chases him away with a stick. The

second scene begins with a celebratory dance as the miller hosts a party for

his neighbors. The guests disperse when the magistrate’s sheriff comes to 

arrest the host. The magistrate returns to the house to visit the miller’s wife 

while her husband is in prison, only after tumbling into the river en route

and changing into the miller’s clothes. After his escape from jail, the miller

suspects his wife of cheating with the magistrate. He finds his rival’s outfit

hanging by the river and dons it with a plan to seduce the magistrate’s wife.

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The sheriffreturns to the miller’s house and attempts to arrest the magistrate, mistaking him for the miller, and the miller’s wife joins the fray to 

rescue the man she mistakes for her husband. The miller returns and

attempts to rescue his wife from the chaos, at which point the magistrate

explains the whole story to general amusement and rejoicing.

Igor Stravinsky’s Renard received its premiere with the Ballet Russes in

May 1922, and Diaghilev staged a revival choreographed by Michel Fokine in

1929. The work’s genesis dates back further, however, to Stravinsky’s days

in Switzerland during World War 1. In 1915 Winnaretta Singer (la Princesse

Edmond de Polignac) commissioned a work from the young sensation, fresh

from his success with The Rite ofSpring, to be performed at her salon.

Although the work was never performed in its intended venue, Stravinsky 

ignored many ofthe operatic and balletic conventions ofthe time to craft

this work for a more intimate space than the standard theater. In composing

so independently, Stravinsky created a combination of acrobatic dance, song,

and declamation oftext intertwined with a musical fabric, the result ofwhich

defied any pre-existing musical genre—the score indicates that “clowns,

dancers, or acrobats” should perform in front ofthe curtain. Here, as in the

composer’s Les Noces (1923), the singers function more as anonymous orchestral instruments than identifying with particular characters in the plotline.

Based on a story from Alexander Afanasyev’s collection of Russian folk 

tales, the title character, Renard, is a cunning fox who twice deceives a cock.

For its first trick, the fox dresses as a nun and reproaches the cock for having

too many wives, and later the fox coaxes the cock from his home with the

promise offood. The cat and the goat rescue the cock both times, but after

the second deception, they strangle the fox, and the three friends bring Renard

to a close by singing and dancing in celebration.

Program notes by Michael Jacko, music program specialist, National Gallery ofArt

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