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At once opulent and eerie, Pietro Mascagni’s Iris, composed in 1898 with libretto by Luigi Illica, received its North American premiere at Bard SummerScape in 2016. The American Symphony Orchestra performs under the baton of Maestro Leon Botstein with a brilliant cast of singers including the Australian tenor Gerard Schneider as a menacing and callous Osaka…

Written by Dame Ethel Smyth, English composer and leader in the women’s suffrage movement, The Wreckers was first performed in Germany in 1906 and was mounted in the composer’s homeland in 1909. This powerful three-act opera about piracy, love, and betrayal in a community of religious fanatics was staged for the first time in the…

In collaboration with Bard’s Fisher Center, ASO Online illuminates the work of German Romantic composer Carl Maria von Weber, featuring his Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1 and Bard SummerScape Opera: Euryanthe. Carl Maria von Weber’s short life was marked by many lows—frequent illnesses, an arrest on embezzlement and other charges—but he also…

A contemporary of Saint-Saëns, Emmanuel Chabrier was an independent-minded and important innovator—many saw him as having paved the way for French modernism. With his comic opera The King in Spite of Himself, he succeeded in creating a sophisticated and forward-looking piece. This stylish and elegant production from the 2012 Bard SummerScape festival as directed by…

One of the most revered Romantic composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Richard Strauss’s symphonic poems and operas remain an indispensable feature of the standard repertoire. This program—which includes the operatic rarity Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae) from the 2011 Bard SummerScape along with various symphonic and choral works—explores the composer’s…

A highly gifted pianist and composer, Taneyev was a protégé and champion of Tchaikovsky’s, serving as a soloist in early performances of the older composer’s piano concertos. Taneyev was one of Russia’s most influential music theorists, teaching for nearly three decades at the Moscow Conservatory where his students included Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Glière; Stravinsky later…