'Sophie's' Voice: Styron Novel Takes an Operatic Turn

Marin Alsop will conduct the Washington National Opera's U.S. premiere of "Sophie's Choice." (By Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)

"Sophie's Choice": First as a bestseller and then as a highly admired film, William Styron's novel was an unusual success in that it was relentlessly downbeat -- a grim tale of Holocaust survivors and the searing memories that would not let them alone. Response to Nicholas Maw's operatic setting, which had its world premiere in 2002 at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was mixed, but those who responded to it did so wholeheartedly. (Anthony Tommasini, who reviewed the premiere for the New York Times, called "Sophie's Choice" an "utterly admirable, affectingly conceived and beautifully realized work.") On Sept. 21, Washington National Opera will present the U.S. premiere of Maw's work at the Kennedy Center. Angelika Kirchschlager will repeat the title role she created in London, with Rod Gilfry (as Nathan Landau) and Gordon Gietz (as Stingo) other carry-overs from the original cast. Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's music director-designate, will conduct.

Maw, an Englishman who now lives in the Washington area, first became aware of "Sophie's Choice" when he rented the film some 10 years after its 1982 release. After Covent Garden commissioned the opera, Maw approached Styron about writing the libretto. The author declined, but suggested that Maw himself do the adaptation. He did, and the libretto was just the element that attracted most of the unfavorable press after the first performance. Still, Simon Rattle, who conducted the premiere, called "Sophie's Choice" the most significant British opera in the past half-century, and now spectators in the United States will have the chance to decide for themselves whether Styron's harrowing story has made a successful translation to a third medium.

Shostakovich Festival: Mstislav Rostropovich's conducting of the 18th- and 19th-century classical repertory has come in for some criticism over the years. And yet in music written during his lifetime -- especially the Russian (or, to put it more exactly, Soviet) repertory from the mid-20th century -- he has few rivals.

To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Rostropovich's great friend Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), the Kennedy Center is presenting a festival that will include two weeks of National Symphony Orchestra concerts conducted by Rostropovich, the NSO's music director laureate. On Nov. 2, 3 and 4, he will lead the Symphony No. 10 in E Minor (the famous, furious miniature scherzo is said to be a musical portrait of Joseph Stalin) and the Violin Concert No. 1, with Maxim Vengerov.

The following week is a little complicated: On Nov. 9 and 10, Rostropovich will lead the brash, youthful Piano Concerto No. 1, with Steven Hendrickson on trumpet and the peerless Martha Argerich as the keyboard soloist. The remainder of the program will be given over to two very different works -- the "Festive Overture" and the brooding and magnificent Symphony No. 8, created during some of the darkest days of World War II.

On the last night, Nov. 11, exit Hendrickson, Argerich and the Piano Concerto, and enter cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who will play the Cello Concerto No. 2, originally written for Rostropovich. (The "Festive Overture" and the Symphony No. 8 remain unchanged.) All in all, these programs promise urgent and emotive musicmaking, as well as serving to commemorate an artistic association of no small historical importance.

Vocal Arts Society and Hayes Piano Series: The Terrace Theater is the smallest auditorium in the Kennedy Center -- fewer than 500 seats, no matter how many rows you put in or take out -- and yet it houses, year after year, two musical series that are inevitably among Washington's most rewarding. Increasingly, too, they sell out, so you may wish to order tickets now.

The Vocal Arts Society, founded in 1990 by a retired Washington psychiatrist, Gerald Perman, presents leading singers in recital, often at the beginning of their careers. The society sponsored the first solo Washington appearances of artists such as the tenor Ian Bostridge, the countertenor David Daniels, the soprano Renee Fleming and the late lamented mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson long before they were well known. This year's offerings include an evening with the soprano Christine Brewer and pianist Craig Rutenberg on Nov. 28 (the program has yet to be determined); on Jan. 28, the Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn will join forces with pianist Joseph Breinl for a program of works by Mahler, Schubert, Strauss and Ives.

The Hayes Piano Series, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, continues to present gifted and original young keyboard artists. The season opens on Oct. 14 with the local debut of Serbian pianist Anika Vavic. Denis Matsuev, a recent winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, will play Nov. 18. Of special interest will be the program by Tanya Bannister on Jan. 27. A champion of women composers, Bannister will play the Washington premiere of composer Suzanne Farrin's "This Is the Story She Began," a work inspired by the women storytellers in Ovid's "Metamorphosis," as well as pieces by all of the "three B's" -- Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.