This Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, Fairfax Symphony Orchestra will be featuring an event.
One of the featured pieces will be Mendelssohn's Oveture to The Fair Melusine.
Melusines are half-women, half-serpent characters from European folklore, resembling mermaids.
There are different stories that depict melusines; in one story, there is an actual character named Melusine. She was the love-child of a king and a fairy, and as many of these star-crossed, cross-breeded love affairs go, there ends up being dilemmas. The king ended up upsetting the fairy somehow, and Melusine, along with her two sisters, decided to seek revenge. Their actions, however, upsetted their mother more. She punished her daughters...Melusine's punishment turned her into a serpent waist-down.
Stories inspired more stories....German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, famously known for his work Fauste, wrote the novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. This novel featured the story Die neue Melusine (the New Melusine).
Franz Seraphicus Grillparzer, an Austrian playwright and poet, took part in the theatrical version of Goethe's story by creating a libretto for Conradin Kreutzer's opera Melusina. In turn, Mendelssohn wrote an overture for the piece.
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information found through internet research :
- wikipedia.org
- http://www.baltic-youth-philharmonic.org/ (courtesy of Dr. Jan Brachmann)
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Event information:
October 3rd, 2009, 8:00 p.m.
Center for the Arts
George Mason University
4400 University Dr., MS 2F5
Fairfax, VA 22030
MOZART: Clarinet Concerto in A MajorJon Manasse, clarinet
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 4
The Center for the Arts is six miles west of the Beltway, at Braddock Road and Route 123 in Fairfax, Virginia.
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