Manchester Music Festival: Grand Finale – Cabaret Songs and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat

The multi-Grammy Award-winning soprano Christine Goerke returns to the Manchester Music Festival as the Devil in Stravinsky’s masterful and sardonic take on the Faust legend, L’Histoire du soldat (Tale of the Soldier).

Originally conceived for a cabaret setting, the work will be semi-staged at Arkell Pavilion by director James Glossman, and features the award-winning stage, film, and television actor David Strathairn (Goodnight, and Good Luck; Nomadland) as the Soldier, with actor Linda Setzer narrating.

The chamber ensemble will be led by Paul Watkins and includes Philip Setzer (violin), Alan Kay (clarinet), and Eduardo Leandro (percussion), as well as Grace O’Connell (trumpet), Bridget Piccirilli (bassoon), and Matthew Nienow (trombone).

Choreography created by Peter Sparling (Martha Graham Dance Company) will be performed by Marie Millard. Hailed “the reigning American dramatic soprano of the day” (The New York Times), Goerke will also perform a selection of cabaret songs drawn from the work of Weill, Bernstein, and Sondheim, with Watkins at the piano; and the MMF Young Artists open the program with the Mozart motet Ave Verum Corpus.

Program:

Mozart / Ave Verum Corpus, K 618 (1791)

Songs by Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Carrie Jacobs Bond, and others

Stravinsky /  L’Histoire du soldat (“Tale of the Soldier”-performed in English) (1918)