Soprano Karen Slack and her accompanist Mary Pinto (from the Eventbrite Web page for the recital being announced)
Next month the Merola Opera Program will launch its Merola Virtual Recital Series of 2021. The recitalist will be soprano Karen Slack, a 2002 Merola alumna. She has prepared a program entitled Of Thee I Sing! Songs of Love and Justice. She will be accompanied at the piano by Mary Pinto, and their performance will be live-streamed from Philadelphia.
Ironically, the program will not include “Of Thee I Sing,” the song that George Gershwin composed for a musical of the same name, which was a scathing satire of political behavior (at least as it was practiced in 1931). Slack’s approach to politics is much more serious; and her program will conclude with the other half of her program’s title, Songs of Love and Justice. This is a collection of three settings of texts by Martin Luther King Jr. given the respective titles “Justice,” “Decisions,” and “Love.” Adolphus Hailstork composed this cycle in 1992 for soprano and orchestra, along with an arrangement for soprano and piano. Hailstork’s “finale” will be preceded by songs composed by Undine Smith Moore (“Love Let the Wind Cry How I Adore Thee” and “I Want To Die While You Love Me”), Harry Burleigh (“Lovely, Dark, and Lonely One”), Scott Gendel (“Kids Who Die”), Leslie Adams (“Prayer”), and Ricky Ian Gordon (“My People”). The program will begin with Clayton White’s arrangement of the spiritual “Over My Head.”
This streamed performance will begin at 4 p.m. (Pacific time) on Sunday, February 7. Tickets are $25 for individuals and $40 for households. A limited number of $80 VIP tickets are available that include a virtual reception with Karen Slack after the performance. Eventbrite has created an event page that will handle all three of these prices.
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