For the convenience of concertgoers 

the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:oo pm.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the 

performance is not allowed. Please be sure that cell phones,

pagers, and other electronic devices are turned off.

Please note that late entry or reentry of

the West Building after 6:30 pm is not permitted.

Music Department

National Gallery of Art

Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue nw

Washington, DC

Mailing address

2000b South Club Drive

Landover, md 20785

www.nga.gov

The Sixty-fifth Season of

The William Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot Belin

Concerts

“Sixty-five, but not retiring”

National Gallery ofArt

2,588th Concert

Alessandra Marc, soprano

David Chapman, pianist

Presented in honor of

Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier (1856-1909)

October 15, 2006

Sunday Evening, 6:30 pm

West Building, West Garden Court

Admissionfree
Program

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Villanelle and Le spectre de la rose from Les nuits d’ete

Henri Duparc (1848-1933)

Phidyle

Extase

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Les illuminations

Phrase 

Antique 

Royaute

Depart

Gustave Charpentier (1860-1956)

Depuis lejour from Louise

INTERMISSION

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi

Umberto Giordano (1867-1948)

Io son I’umile ancella from Andrea Chenier

Puccini

Quando m’en vo and Si, mi chiamano Mimi from La Boheme

Un bel di vedremo from Madama Butterfly

BRIEF PAUSE

Meredith Willson (1902-1984)

Till There Was You from The Music Man

Rodgers (1902-1979) and Hammerstein (1895-1960)

This Nearly Was Mine from South Pacific

Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

I Got the Sun in the Morning from Annie Get Your Gun

Rodgers and Hammerstein

I Loved You Once in Silence from Camelot

Harold Arlen (1905-1986)

Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard ofOz

Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) and Frederick Loewe (1901-1988)

I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady
The Musicians

ALESSANDRA MARC

Dramatic soprano Alessandra Marc has consistently been acclaimed one

ofthe world’s outstanding singers. She is a frequent guest ofleading opera

houses and orchestras, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, James Conlon, Colin Davis, Andreas Delfs,

Christoph von Dohnanyi, Charles Dutoit, Christopher Eschenbach, Heinz

Fricke, Daniele Gatti, Marek Janowski, Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Zubin

Mehta, Kent Nagano, Seiji Ozawa, Victor Pablo Perez, Esa-Pekka Salonen,

Gerard Schwarz, Leif Segerstam, Sir Georg Solti, Christian Thielemann,

Michael Tilson Thomas, Edo de Waart, and Franz Welser-Most. In her

Metropolitan Opera debut, she sang the title role in Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida,

which she has also sung at the Lyric Opera ofChicago, the San Francisco

Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. Recent highlights ofher career include

performances of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 with the Seattle Symphony

and Verdi’s Missa da requiem with the Choral Arts Society ofWashington;

the first performance in Israel of Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder; and the

role of Briinnhilde in a complete concert performance of Die Walkure, led

by Kent Nagano. Among Marc’s many recordings are Isaac Albeniz’s Henry

Clifford; Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9; Alban Berg’s FiXnf Orchesterlieder nach

Ansichtskartentexten von Peter Altenberg and Lulu Suite; Arthur Honegger’s Le

roi David; Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf; Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 8;

and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot.

This concert marks Alessandra Marc's sixth appearance at the National

Gallery. Her Gallery debut occurred in January 1991, and her second appearance came just two months later, when she stepped in for the ailing Arleen

Auger to sing Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder with the National Gallery Orchestra

under George Manos. The concert was a critically acclaimed triumph and a

fitting celebration ofthe fiftieth anniversary ofthe Gallery’s founding and its

2,000th Sunday concert, both ofwhich occurred on March 17,1991.

4

DAVID CHAPMAN

David Chapman holds degrees and performance diplomas in piano from the

Peabody Institute ofJohns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Eastman

School of Music in Rochester, New York. Chapman was a concerto soloist at

Eastman, he served as an opera coach at both conservatories, and he studied

orchestral conducting and choral conducting with George Cleve and Charlene

Archibeque, respectively. He was awarded a Fulbright grant in solo piano

performance and studied in Germany. He remained in Europe for a total

of eleven years, during which time he performed recitals in Austria, Italy,

Switzerland, Denmark, Hungary, and Germany. Chapman has recorded for

the Siiddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart and the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in

Cologne, and has appeared on German television with the world-renowned

soprano Felicia Weathers. Chapman has performed in several Stuttgart Ballet

premieres and collaborated with Fernando Bujones ofthe American Ballet

Theater. He has also played in master classes for soprano Martina Arroyo,

bass-baritone Hans Hotter, soprano Evelyn Lear, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Felicia Weathers.

A founding member ofVocal Arts International, a network ofinternational

cultural exchanges among singers, Chapman has given voice master classes at

the Moscow Conservatory; the Pedagogical University of Beijing; the Shanghai

Conservatory of Music; the Shanghai Opera House; the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, China; and the Universities ofOklahoma and Nebraska. He 

also served as a vocal coach for three years at the International Bach Academy 

in Stuttgart under Helmuth Rilling. A member ofthe Friday Morning Music

Club and the National Association ofTeachers of Singing (nats), Chapman is

on the adjunct faculty roster at the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland, and

serves as music director and pianist at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist

Church in Adelphi, Maryland.

5
Program Notes

The selections in the first portion ofthis program include works by three

French composers who were older or younger contemporaries ofthe medalist and reliefsculptor Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier (1856-1909).

Born in the Marais, then a working-class neighborhood of Paris, Charpentier

was apprenticed at age twelve to a decorative engraver. At that time, Hector 

Berlioz was the universally acknowledged grand master of French music and

a controversial national hero. In the 1870s, when Charpentier was training

at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the renowned medalist Hubert

Ponscarme, Henri Duparc was in his prime as a composer of French songs.

By the early 1890s, when Charpentier was affiliated with the radical vernacular Parisian theater (for which he designed playbills and sketched leading 

actors and critics in clay), Gustave Charpentier (apparently no relation to

the sculptor) was working on his most famous opera, Louise, which eventually had its premiere in 1900. By the end of his life, Alexandre-Louis-Marie

Charpentier was celebrated by his contemporaries as a key figure in the art 

nouveau movement in France. The exhibition of his works remains on view

in the West Building (Ground Floor, Gallery 21) through January 28, 2007.

Although written by an Englishman in the 1930s, Benjamin Britten’s Les

illuminations has a relationship to late nineteenth-century French art, since the 

lyrics are taken from the poems ofArthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the enfant

terrible of French poetry ofthe period. Rimbaud's writings had a profound 

effect on other literary figures, artists, and musicians; however, Britten’s use

of Rimbaud is striking, since Britten was among the first to introduce the 

poet into the French song tradition. Both poet and composer were facing exile

when they worked on their respective pieces — Rimbaud in London and Britten in New York—but Britten's use of French functions as a sort oftheatrical

mask that deflects and complicates his emotional expression. The role-playing,

the musical and linguistic virtuosity, and the heated sensuality ofthe songs

make Les illuminations unique among his early works.

6

Gustave Charpentier’s opera Louise is rarely performed in its entirety 

(partly because its plot and character development are naive by contemporary standards), but its lyrical arias for the title character are favorites among

sopranos. Performed for the first time on February 2, 1900, it was the first

new opera produced at Paris’s Opera Comique in the twentieth century.

Louise was an immediate success and was seen all over the world during

the next forty years, bringing Charpentier wide acclaim. It also launched the

career of Scottish soprano Mary Garden, who took over the title role during an early performance. Woven into the dialogue are two ofCharpentier’s

favorite themes: his fervent love ofthe city of Paris and his political convictions with regard to freedom and self-determination. In 1902 Charpentier

acted on his convictions by founding the Conservatoire Populaire Mimi Pinson, which provided a free arts education to working-class girls. Ironically,

his administrative work distracted him from composition, and he wrote no

other significant works in the later part of his life.