Concert Unlv Wind Orchestra and

Concert UNLV Wind Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble Conductor(s): Tara Krysa and Rachel Waddell Cost: $10, $8/senior-military, Free to UNLV Faculty, Staff and UNLV and CCSD students with ID Mozart, "The Impresario Overture: Haydn, "La Canterina" with the UNLV Opera Theater Divas Music - This was a first for me, and wow -- was I surprised. The first work, Mozart's Impresario Overture, was from an opera in which Mozart entered in a musical competition in 1765 when he was only 9 years old.

Unbelievable that someone so young could compose such a vibrant, whimsical and rousing piece of music that has stood the test of time. I was also surprised that the entire opera, including the overture, lasts only 30 minutes and has only four vocal numbers. Instead, as was typical of the time, it was "filled" in with spoken dialog or dialog sung as a recitativo. The music was rousing -- almost like something one would wake up to in the morning.

You can hear the theme in the woodwind and upper strings; bouncing lively back and forth in conversation. The orchestra was larger than the previous concert I attended; more brass and a larger number of strings, which only increased the vibrancy of this music for me. The main portion of the program was a concert version of an opera by Josef Haydn.

Haydn, it seems, was one of the grand composers of the classical symphony, many people came to study with him, and his attention to form and detail were imitated by a number of composers after his death (Shubert, Schuman, even Brahms and Mahler). Haydn wrote this comic opera in 1877 for Price Esterhazy, one of the patrons of the arts at the time. The title means "The Songstress" or "The Diva," and has only four major roles, 2 tenors and 2 sopranos.

Like many comic operas of the time, this one revolves around the manner in which a young man tries to woo a young woman through intrigue and a set of what we might call "soap opera plots." What I found interesting is that once the overall plot was understood via the program notes, it was not necessary to "see" the opera acted in costume. Instead, the music was quite descriptive in its comic, serious, and even somewhat bawdy (at times) portrayals of greed, young love, etc.

Also, it turns out that this opera is often performed with women playing the younger men, or men playing the older women -- a sort of cross-dressing joke from a rather serious composer. The music was light, though, the singers were obviously having fun, and even through the opera was in Italian (again common at the time), most everything was clear and understandable. The Concert Experience- It was in this realm that the true nature of this work shone through.

The overture certainly was rousing and got everyone in a positive and gleeful frame of mind. But it was the opera in concert that had the audience laughing at the antics, or the vocal.