Word: penseroso
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Four Saints, which opened in New York City this month (it was first seen in London and Berkeley, Calif., last year), was the exuberant centerpiece of the Mark Morris Dance Group's 20th-anniversary season. Sixteen of the choreographer's 100-odd dances--from L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a full-evening extravaganza for 24 dancers, four singers, chorus and orchestra, to Peccadillos, a duet for Morris and a toy piano--were presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Meanwhile, across the street, the company is moving into the brand-new Mark Morris Dance Center, its first permanent...
...Sunday October 26, the Handel and Haydn Society, under the direction of Christopher Hogwood, presented the second of two performances of their season opener, Handel's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato. This 1740 work combines excerpts from two Milton poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, with original poetry by Handel's librettist Charles Jennens, the Il Moderato, set to what is essentially orchestral accompaniment...
...respectively. The exceptional soloists gave performances worthy of Hogwood's illustrious direction, perhaps even of Milton himself. Especially notable were sopranos Sharon Baker and Lisa Saffer, whose powerful voices captured both the light, lilting passages of L'Allegro and the "grave music," as Handel termed it, of Il Penseroso. Christine Brandes, also soprano, however, sounded a bit too bright and overharsh at times. Tenor Alan Bennett and bass David Thomas also demonstrated impressive talent and musical sensitivity...
...Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato is composed of three parts. The first and second are interspersed excerpts from L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, chosen and arranged, scholars now believe, by a friend and colloborator of Handel's, James Harris. L'Allegro is, as the title suggests, full of bright, youthful phrasing and imagery. Hymen is invoked and the praise of "bustling cities" sung. Il Penseroso, on the other hand, is filled with the language of age, of cloisters, weariness and Heaven. The speaker plans to enter "a peaceful hermitage" where he hopes to sit and reflect...
...verging even on morose, culminating in the final couplet of the work: a grandiose choral motto, "Thy pleasures, Moderation, give/ In them alone we truly live." Moderation is not quite so enchanting a subject as either the joie de vivre of L'Allegro or the melancholic beauty of Il Penseroso. Nor could any claim that Jennens' verse stands quite equal to the Milton it seeks to reprove. Though the music is still lovely, the final reprimand of Il Moderato seems hardly the proper note on which to end a work largely hymning youthful exuberance and the contemplative life...