Tanglewood schedule week 8 August 24 – 26, 2012
On Saturday, August 25, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos presides over a program of music from his native Spain. The concert begins with Maestro Frühbeck’s own arrangement of Albéniz’s Suite española, but the main event is a complete concert performance of Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve (Life is Short), an opera about the doomed love of a gypsy woman for an upper-class man, complete with Flamenco dancing and a Spanish folk singer, a program first performed under Maestro Frühbeck in 2003. The two lead roles are sung by mezzo-soprano Nancy Fabiola Herrera and tenor Vicente Ombuena.
The 2012 Tanglewood season comes to a close with its traditional performance of Beethoven’s transcendent Symphony No. 9, on Sunday, August 26. The big finale will be preceded this year by the world premiere of a BSO-commissioned new work by John Harbison. Vocal soloists for Beethoven’s Ninth are soprano Leah Crocetto, mezzo-soprano Meredith Arwady, tenor Frank Lopardo, and bass-baritone John Relyea.