Utah Symphony & Utah Opera to Host Annual Cultural Festival Highlighting 'The Romantics'

During the 2014-15 season, Utah Symphony | Utah Opera celebrates the 19th century with community partners by exploring art, dance, food, film, and music created under the Romantic influence. For a complete listing of events and online learning materials for The Romantics Cultural Festival, please visit, www.usuo.org/festival.

The artistic movement known as Romanticism swept through Western civilization at the beginning of the 1800s. Its practitioners rebelled against the structure and order cherished by previous generations, and regarded the free expression of individual feelings and experiences as more reliable sources of truth than rational thought. The movement dominated artistic imaginations for an entire century with its focus on truths, often mystical and spiritual, gleaned from nature and from individual experience.

Learn more about this movement in art history in USUO's Romantics Online Learning materials prepared by associate professor at the University of Utah's School of Music, Dr. Bettie Jo Basinger.

Highlights of this year's Romantics festival include:

• Utah Opera's production of Georges Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers" from January 17 to 25, two evenings of German Lieder performed by Utah Opera's Resident Artists, and a wealth of symphony concerts featuring the music of Romantic composers including Ludwig Van Beethoven and Gustav Mahler.
• Harmon's Chef Aaron Bullard offering a demonstration and dinner expressive of 19th century German Romanticism for up to 20 participants on March 28, and a similar event expressing French Romanticism on May 2, both preceding Romantic Utah Symphony concerts.
• A special painting event, "Romantic Cloud Drawings," offered to individuals and family groups on March 21 at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Nineteenth century Romantic artists loved to show nature at its most fierce, with roiling clouds and wild forests, and at this event audiences can study the Romantic art on display and then create their own dramatic cloud drawing. This event is free thanks to the ZAP funding.
• In-depth conversations about Romanticism will be led by Dr. Catherine Mayes, Assistant Professor of Musicology, University of Utah School of Music, at UMFA; and Dr. Scott Black from the University of Utah English Department. Dr. Black's discussion will take place at JitterBug Coffee Hop (1855 S. 700 E.) and focus on Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma." Get the novel and plan to join us on March 5; a 10 percent discount is available at The King's English.
• Other highlights include Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" performed by Ballet West and several film screenings at Salt Lake City Public Library, including "Wagner and Me," presented with the Utah Film Center, in which actor Stephen Fry explores his troubled passion for the composer Richard Wagner.

For a complete listing of events and online learning materials for the 2014-15 Romantics Cultural Festival, please visit, www.usuo.org/festival.