Chadwick: Il Padrone

[mikehopf]

On Radio WWUH in Connecticut tonight:

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera: Chadwick, The Padrone, | Vasquez, Sierra, Liang & Paredes, Cuatro Corridos
This year for the Sunday of the Labor Day holiday weekend I offer you listeners two very different lyric theaterworks which both deal with the touchy subject of human trafficking and illicit labor. First comes the work of New England's own composer and music educator George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931). He was the longtime director of the New England Conservatory in Boston. Chadwick composed several operas, one of which The Padrone (1912) was never performed in his lifetime. (Chadwick offered it to the Met but it was turned down.) The Padrone received its world premiere concert performance in 1995 at the vintage opera house in Thomaston, Connecticut. Chadwick conceived it as a realistic verismo-style lyric theaterpiece under the influence of Puccini. In the early twentieth century the padrone (Italian for "the boss") was a species of unscrupulous employer who shipped poor Italian laborers to the United States, then kept the immigrants in a state of virtual slavery to him. When love enters the padrone's cold heart for a young female immigrant a romantic tragedy ensues. The Padrone was given only one concert performance at the Thomaston Opera House on September 29, 1995. The Waterbury Symphony took part in the musical proceedings, along with Concora, the Connecticut Choral Artists singing association and five vocal soloists. The Hartford Courant's classical music critic Steve Metcalf was in the audience that night in Thomaston. He reviewed the performance favorably. The world premiere recording of Chadwick's The Padrone is available as a download from the House of Opera website.

I've had this opera for many years and can strongly recommend it to lovers of verismo.