Erich Wolfgang Korngold — a Viennese prodigy who wrote several operas before fleeing the Nazis and moving to Hollywood, where his lush film scores provided the soundtracks for Errol Flynn’s finest swashbuckling — will be the focus of the musical offerings this summer at Bard College.
Some of the programs, announced this week, will be familiar to Korngold fans — including a semi-staged production of his most popular opera, “Die Tote Stadt,” and excerpts from his Oscar-winning score for “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
Other concerts will feature rarer fare. There will be a performance of Korngold’s Concerto in C sharp for piano, left hand, which he wrote in 1923 for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost an arm in World War I. And Bard will present the U.S. premiere of Korngold’s 1927 opera “The Miracle of Heliane” (“Das Wunder der Heliane”) in production by Christian Räth, with Leon Botstein, Bard’s president, conducting the American Symphony Orchestra (which he also leads) and the tenor Daniel Brenna.
The full Bard performance series, Bard SummerScape, will run June 29-Aug. 18 at the college’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, culminating during its final two weekends with “Korngold and His World,” the 30th season of the Bard Music Festival. In addition to its Korngold programs, Bard will present Michael Gordon’s B-movie-theme opera “Acquanetta”; and “Grace and Mercy,” by choreographer Ronald K. Brown, with live music by Meshell Ndegeocello.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.