American Symphony Orchestra Launches Free Streaming Series: ASO Online

American Symphony Orchestra has launched ASO Online, a new digital initiative in collaboration with Bard's Fisher Center. To stay in touch with its audiences and to help the community escape from stress through music during the COVID-19 pandemic, ASO will release a recording of a past performance for streaming on its website each Wednesday. Streaming content will alternate each week between a??live video recordings of operas from Bard's SummerScape festival featuring ASO as the orchestra-in-residence, and iconic symphonic audio recordings from the Orchestra's past seasons.

The streaming series opened with SummerScape's 2019 production of Erich Korngold's rarely-performed opera Das Wunder der Heliane (The Miracle of Heliane), performed at the Fisher Center's Sosnoff Theater and available now. Set in an unidentified totalitarian state, The Miracle of Heliane presents an erotic triangle between a ruthless despot, his beautiful and neglected wife Heliane, and a young, messianic stranger. An allegorical tale about the destruction of a dictatorship by a woman, German director Christian Räth described the work as "a dark mystery play, an intimate psychodrama, and an epic dystopian political thriller all at once. The entrancing power of Korngold's music explores the peaks and chasms of the human soul and takes us right into the emotional labyrinth inside each character." The recording of this three-act opera marked the work's American premiere at Bard in 2019. It was originally premiered at Hamburg State Opera in 1927.

Recordings will remain available for free streaming for 45 days during the current pandemic. ASO is grateful to the Orchestra committee, the American Federation of Musicians, SummerScape, Bard Music Festival, and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts who helped to make this content available.

Das Wunder der Heliane (The Miracle of Heliane)

Composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold with a libretto by Hans Müller-Einigen

Leon Botstein, Conductor and Music Director

Christian Räth, Director

American Symphony Orchestra

Bard Festival Chorale

James Bagwell, Chorus Master Set

Esther Bialas, Set and Costume Design

Thomas C. Hase, Lighting Design

Elaine J. McCarthy, Projection Design

Catherine Galasso, Movement Direction

J. Jared Janas, Wig, Hair, and Makeup Design

Heliane Aušrin?- Stundyt?-

The Ruler Alfred Walker

The Stranger Daniel Brenna

The Messenger Jennifer Feinstein

The Porter Nicholas Brownlee

Blind Chief Justice David Cangelosi

The Judges Nathan Berg, Scott Conner, Michael J. Hawk, Derek Taylor, Kevin Thompson, Richard Troxell

Young Man Joseph Demarest*

Celestial Voices Aine Hakamatsuka*, Caroline Miller*

Aged Child Ezra Quinn Lombino

Young Boy Vladimir Villano Vazquez

*Member of Bard Festival Chorale

Sung in German, with English supertitles

Additional details can be found in the archived festival performance program here.