New World Symphony Opens 37th Season with Powerful Performances
- wgclients01
- Aug 23, 2024
- 2 min read
This October, Artistic Director Stéphane Denève opens NWS's 37th season with two concerts you won't want to miss. From MTT's From the Diary of Anne Frank to Viktor Ullmann's The Kaiser of Atlantis, this music takes on new urgency today.
These concerts are part of Resonance of Remembrance, a season-long series commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Learn more at www.nws.edu/peace.
Denève Conducts MTT and Shostakovich
Saturday, October 5 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, October 6 at 2:00 PM
New World Center
Heartbreak, hope and everything in between…
Join NWS Fellows and Artistic Director Stéphane Denève for the first South Florida performance of MTT’s Grammy-winning From the Diary of Anne Frank in over 30 years. At once solemn and optimistic, the musical melodrama was originally written for Audrey Hepburn.
After intermission, New World Symphony returns for a life-saving symphony penned by Shostakovich under the scrutiny of Stalin. Inspired by Russian literature, Shostakovich slyly subverted folk songs, film scores, liturgy and waltzes, hinting at feelings far darker and more complex than would have otherwise been allowed.
This program is sponsored in part by Ira M. Birns and Arlenis Birns, World Kinect Corporation
The Seven Deadly Sins
Saturday, October 19 at 7:30 PM
Sunday, October 20 at 2:00 PM
New World Center
Biting social commentary and the origins of American musical theater...
Persecuted by the Nazi regime, Ullmann and Weill wrote defiantly satirical works that endure to this day. New World Symphony and Artistic Director Stéphane Denève juxtapose opera and theater with New World Center’s cutting-edge technology in a haunting tribute to those lost to the horrors of war and fascism.
Composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Peter Kien were prisoners in the Nazi propaganda camp Terezín when creating the one-act opera The Kaiser of Atlantis. Ullmann and Kien were murdered at Auschwitz, but their work lives on in concert halls around the world. “By no means did we sit weeping,” wrote Ullmann of his imprisonment at Terezín. “Our will to create was commensurate with our will to live.”
When Nazis seized control of Berlin, Kurt Weill partnered with longtime collaborator Bertolt Brecht to write The Seven Deadly Sins, a sung ballet and biting critique of capitalism that would mark the end of the duo’s partnership. Soprano Danielle de Niese plays Anna, our split personality heroine whose journey through America mirrors Weill’s journey across Europe as he sought a new artistic home.
Weill survived the war and found success in New York, where he established himself as one of the most important voices in musical theater. His work went on to be performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, The Doors and David Bowie.
This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY.