Boston Opera Collaborative Presents LOVE IN THE TIME OF Next Month

Boston Opera Collaborative returns to live, indoor performances with Love in the Time Of, a musical pairing of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe with a brand-new song cycle commissioned during the pandemic.

Performing November 10-12 at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, Love in the Time Of features the work of 10 poets and 8 composers who collaborated on a new song cycle featuring 16 songs, each one a reflection on a song from the Schumann cycle. The work is a fully staged narrative that interweaves Schumann's work with the work of 21st-century composers and poets.

"This performance will appeal to both fans of traditional art song and fans of contemporary music", said Patricia-Maria Weinmann, the show's director and co-artistic director of Boston Opera Collaborative. "By combining the traditional and the contemporary with vivid music storytelling, BOC has created a compelling, modern narrative of love, loss, and forgiveness, weaving together Schumann's gorgeous Dichterliebe, one of the most beloved song cycles from the 19th century, and 16 new songs by some of the most exciting composers and poets working today."

Love in the Time Of is the product of the pandemic as well as a previous song cycle pairing mounted by BOC. "In 2017, we mounted a production called MIRROR that paired Robert Schumann's song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben and Dominick Argento's From the Dairy of Virginia Woolf," said Greg Smucker, Co-Artistic Director. "It was a piece where the audience followed singers from room to room throughout the old mansion that's part of the campus of the Longy School of Music at Bard College. That experience left us wanting to explore other ways to stage art song. When our performances were shut down during the pandemic, we conceived this idea of commissioning a new cycle based on and inspired by Dichterliebe, a classic of song cycle repertoire."

Although written in the early 19th century, Dichterliebe has a modern feel in both expression and sensibility. The BOC team felt it was a perfect jumping-off point for creating an entirely new song cycle with which it could be paired or "mirrored" in performance. The company commissioned 16 new poems, which were set to music by 8 composers, each one a reflection or response to the brilliant works in Schumann's cycle.

As stage director, Weinmann will interweave the songs from both cycles into a fully staged narrative. "The work explores the love we aspire to and the things we must let go amidst all the promise, turmoil, wonder, and heartache of the 21st century. Written during the height of the pandemic, many of the poems in this new work reflect those incredibly challenging times - some with humor, some with darkness; some with joy and discovery; some with grief and remorse. The overall narrative of the production incorporates all of this and arrives at a place of calm and forgiveness, of ourselves and others."

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