This week on Rhode Island Public television:
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
Saturday, September 15, 2018, 8:00pm
Sunday, September 16, 2018, 3:00am
Monday, September 17, 2018, 12:00am
CENDRILLON
Massenet’s
operatic take on the classic fairy tale Cinderella, starring Joyce DiDonato as
the titular heroine and Alice Coote as Prince Charming, alongside Kathleen Kim
as the Fairy Godmother and Stephanie Blythe as Madame de la Haltière.
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VARDA HADASSAH LEV (nΓ©e Sherman)
died on September 6, 2018. A loving wife and mother, she was also a gifted
and passionate pianist, music and Hebrew educator, talented polylot, and
patroness of the arts in the grand tradition of the European salon mistress,
with a note-perfect knowledge of classical music repertoire and tireless
dedication to tikkun olam. She published several memoirs in Hadassah Magazine
and the Pakn Treger. Born in Jerusalem in 1932 to Earl Mayo Sherman, and to
Anna (nΓ©e Grossman) Sherman, a pioneering Hebraist and first woman instructor
at the Jewish Theological Seminary, she moved with her family to New York
City in 1936. She deepened her knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish learning under
the tutelage of her parents, and attendance at Camp Massad, which proffered
Hebrew and Jewish knowledge to Americans and refugees during and after WWII.
She was one of only three girls first to be Bat Mitzvaed in the US. She
studied piano and Humanities at the High School of Music and Arts and
University of Pennsylvania, and received her M.A. from the Teacher's College
at Columbia University. She taught kindergarten in Harlem, New York,
enlisting her musical knowledge toward a unique early childhood pedagogy,
which she then brought to the Kibbutz Gesher Haziv. While raising her young
family in New York City, she honed her musical skills with musical luminaries
whom she accompanied or hosted in her home. Upon moving to Providence, she
taught traditional Jewish and Israeli music at the Temple Emanuel Hebrew
School. She inspired decades' worth of youth in her Hebrew choir and private
piano instruction; formed a Klezmer youth band; transposed scores for her
students from numerous Hebraicized musicals, and designed and played piano
for performances based on Jewish tradition.
She enlisted her musical expertise as a board member of the Rhode Island
Chamber Music Committee, bringing world-renowned artists to vthe area. A
modern-day Mme. de SΓ©vignΓ©, she converted her Victorian home into a musical
and cultural salon. Her soirΓ©es benefited organizations such as Community
MusicWorks, whose illustrious members brought classical music education to
children in need. She hosted, accompanied in musical rehearsal, and organized
recitals for the Beaux Arts Trio, the Muir String Quartet, the Moscow Male
Jewish Choir, the Amadeus Trio, Richard Goode, Joshua Bell, Yitzhak Perlman,
and many others.
She was also an eshet chayil who opened her artistic salons, celebrations of the Jewish holidays, and Old World kitchen to local and international communities, friends, and the "stranger at the gate;" an engaging raconteuse of refinement but also witand empathy. A valued member of Temple Emanuel for 40 years, she brought to the community her gifts as a lyrical chanter of liturgical trope in many aliyot, pedagogical Hebrew and musical expertise, cultural enrichment lectures, and charity initiatives. She participated in annual Ulpans sponsored by the Jewish Board of Education, and an advanced Hebrew study group performing exegesis of Biblical and contemporary Israeli texts. She also donated and helped curate the Percelay Museum's collection of her brother Ori Sherman's artworks, including magnificent Ketubbot and his illustration of the Aramaic song that ends the Seder, Chad Gadya. She is survived by her husband, Robert Lev, her daughters Leora Lev, Rebecca Murray, and Zoe Shireen Lev, her grandchildren Rachael, Heather, Michael, and Anabelle, and great grandchildren, Masho, Redeit, Avery, and Mya.
Published in The Providence
Journal from Sept. 7 to Sept. 9, 2018
*** *** …And from another friend, Brett Rutherford: I can add that Varda studied piano with the legendary Raymond Lewenthal, and that she adored Brahms above all other composers. She would stage even impromptu small audiences when one of her pupils was ready to play before "the public" and I heard one 16-year-old prodigy there play the Bach Goldberg variations. String players came to her house to play duos with her, and she continued to have adult piano students until quite recently. Jane Bromberg was one of her students. Varda played matchmaker for a number of young musicians, and many of her home concerts were benefits for them or for groups like Community Musicworks. It is no exaggeration to say that she was the soul of chamber music in Providence. 
May choirs of angels lead her to her rest.
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OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D’AGUANNO
With the
opening of the Met's 2018/2019 season still nearly two weeks away (Sept. 24 -
Saint-Saens's "Samson & Dalila" with Roberto Alagna and Elina
Garanca), opera-lovers can find much to entertain themselves with operatically,
thanks to OperaVision which, this Friday (Sept. 14), is bringing us a FREE
video-stream of Mozart's "Magic Flute" in a Garsington Opera
production that was seen this past summer. Then, in the weeks ahead, there will
be videos of Britten's 1947 comic opera "Albert Herring" (Sept. 21),
Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (Sept. 28), & Korngold's "Die
Tote Stadt" (Sept. 30), all of them becoming available for several months
after their initial showing on the OperaVision website.
For those
Anna Netrebko fans who may have missed it the first time around, the La Scala
opening night performance from last December (12/7/17) of Giordano's
"Andrea Chenier" can be heard once again on German Radio, with Ms
Netrebko taking on the role of Maddalena.
ORF
(Austria) is, in the meantime, providing us with another opportunity to listen
to the July 11, 2018, performance of Richard Strauss's "Ariadne auf
Naxos" from this summer's opera festival in Aix-en-Provence.
On NPR, it's
time for Gounod's "Faust" in a 2003 performance from the Academy of
Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
Enjoy!
DAVE
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE
WORLD OF MUSIC
A Queenly Start to the SF Opera Season
KDFC Album of the Week
Daniel Barenboim Leads the Complete Brahms
Symphonies
KDFC’s Love at First Listen Week | Starting
September 24th
Alec Baldwin/Christiane Kubrick on
Stanley’s Use of Music
As Fall Fast Approaches, Discover the
Poetry in Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”
Wake Up! Here’s a Little Duet for Piccolo
and … Alarm Clock
Composer Tilmann
Dehnhard has written quite the piece to get you going in the morning. Sep 10,
2018
On the Origin of That Iconic Nokia Ringtone
TΓ‘rrega’s “Gran Vals”
might be best known as the “Nokia Tune,” but how did the company’s sound design
team choose it? Sep 6, 2018
For Two NFL Players, Music Is Just As
Important As Gridiron Training
Jason Kelce and Justin
Tucker are two active NFL Players and Super Bowl Champions — but music is a big
part of their lives, too. Sep 6, 2018
Royal Wedding Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s
Summer in the Spotlight
It’s been just over 100
days since the Royal Wedding — which means it’s also a perfect time to check in
with show-stealing cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Sep 6, 2018
Yuja Wang’s Ultimate Warm-up: Concertos On
Demand
Before heading out to
crush some Prokofiev with the Berlin Philharmonic, pianist Yuja Wang hyped
herself up by playing a few concerto themes on demand. Sep 5, 2018
Top of the Class: Five Student Works by
Great Composers
Even the great
composers had to start somewhere. Sep 5, 2018
Musicians Need to Unwind, Too! Here’s a
Handful Making the Most of Summer
Didn’t get a chance to
get away this summer? Live vicariously through these musicians. Sep 3, 2018
LISTEN | New Comma Baroque in the WFMT
Levin Performance Studio
Hear a diverse group of
works, including a Chicago premiere, in this concert and conversation recorded
live at WFMT.
The True Origins of Gershwin’s “Summertime”
“Summertime” from
George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is doubtless one of the one most popular songs
in the Great American Songbook. But did you know that neither the tune to
“Summertime” nor the lyrics are by George Gershwin?
Classical music for pumpkin spice season
that’s anything but basic
While we all love the
classics like the “Autumn” concerto from Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons,"
here are some works that are a little less… common to cozy up with this fall.
How a Bach Minuet got a Motown Makeover
Bach’s Minuet in G
major from the Notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach is famous enough today that
you may have even had it as your cell phone ring tone. One of the most famous
arrangements of this Minuet was recorded by the Toys, a girl group from
Jamaica, New York, as “A Lover’s Concerto.” The song was a #1 single in the US
and reached #5 on the UK Global charts.
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♪♪♪♪♪♪
LOOK FOR THE
MET SATURDAY AFTERNOON
RADIO BROADCAST TO RESUME NEXT AUTUMN.
GO TO
HTTP://WWW.WQXR.ORG/STREAMS
THEN CLICK ON WQXR 105.9 FM
HTTP://WWW.WQXR.ORG/STREAMS
THEN CLICK ON WQXR 105.9 FM
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NO OPERA ON
WGBH THIS WEEK!
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