Anna Wojcik Graduation Recital - May 2022
Anna Wojcik, soprano
Peter Tiefenbach, piano
Esther Su Young Hwang, flute
Anna is a student of Jean MacPhail. This recital is in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music Degree in Performance at the Glenn Gould School.
Program
St. John Passion BMV 245 J.S. Bach
Ich folge dir gleichfalls
Zerfließe, mein Herze
The Creation Hob. XXI:2 Haydn
With Verdure Clad
On Mighty Pens
Słowiczku Mój Zelenski
Muzyka Mojej Duszy Op. 59 No. 3. Nowowiejski
Kazała mi Mama Op. 27 No. 4 Nowowiejski
Drei Lieder der Ophelia Op. 67 Strauss
I. Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulib vor andern nun?
II. Guten Morgen, ’s ist Sankt Valentinstag
III. Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß
Toccata for Flute and Soprano Freedman
La mort d’Ophélie Saint-Saens
Le Rossignol et la Rose Saint-Saens
I Went To Heaven Walker
Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia Heggie
I. Ophelia’s Song
II. Women Have Loved Before
III. Not in a Silver casket
IV. Spring
Program Note
The second half of my recital will follow the story of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet. Ophelia heeds the warning of her father to cease contact with Hamlet, and after doing so, Hamlet denounces and insults her. Hamlet later mistakenly kills Ophelia’s father. Because of these events, she ends up going mad and ultimately drowns. Ophelia is shaped and defined by the men in her life, and deserted by each. She has no identity of her own, only that which is constructed for her by others. This is why I want to paint Ophelia’s story in a new light.
I will begin the program with Ophelia’s monologue. This is the moment after Hamlet cruelly rejects her. She is crushed and laments how his mind has fallen. It is the start of her descent into madness. This leads into three songs by Strauss, the text of which is drawn from Shakespeare’s original depiction of Ophelia’s mad scene. The first has vivid imagery of Ophelia’s father, at his own funeral. In her madness, she confuses her lover, Hamlet, with her father. In the second, Ophelia then abruptly switches to describing Hamlet’s capricious behaviour involving his seduction and abandonment of her. In the third, Ophelia returns to grieving her father’s death.
The Toccata by Freedman represents Ophelia’s madness at its peak. The flute is the voice inside Ophelia’s mind. She is unable to speak real words, instead saying nonsense syllables. The final moment of the Toccata is her rejection of all the outside voices, instead uniting with the voice in her head, and going completely mad.
La Mort D’Ophelie by Saint-Saëns uses text based on Queen Gertrude’s description of Ophelia’s drowning. Within my recital, this song is Ophelia speaking of herself in third person, as if she is removed from her own body while she drowns. Her death leads straight into Saint-Saëns’ Vocalise: Ophelia opens her eyes and realizes she is in heaven. Unable to speak and with no words to describe what she is discovering, Ophelia is left to simply sing. Ophelia comes to her senses with Walker’s I Went to Heaven, and mischievously describes what she saw in heaven.
The final set is Heggie’s Songs and Sonnets to Ophelia which are a reflection of everything Ophelia has experienced. The first song juxtaposes blossoming images of spring with Ophelia’s sense of powerlessness and imprisonment. The second song describes a woman who is reading the great love stories of women in mythology. Ophelia is represented as a headstrong woman with an intense awareness of her sensuality, and to me what feels like a present-day Ophelia. In the third song, the Ophelia-like character states her love in the most simple and uncomplicated terms. The poem is reminiscent of the time before Ophelia’s heartbreak, and what she may have shared with Hamlet. In the final song, the young woman has returned to her senses and given up. No longer naive, this Ophelia is jaded by love without the will to continue living; she is preparing to join nature through her death in the pond.
