'Laura's song' reprise
Fate and fortune smile again on Savia family with 'Carmina Burana'
By Roger McBain (Contact)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
DeVonnaLawrence will be featured soprano soloist at Saturday's concert
Even if you think you don't know it, you've likely heard snippets of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" someplace, says Alfred Savia.
Laura Savia makes her dad think of "Carmina Burana" as her song
The cantata's bold rhythms have surged through Gatorade commercials,
cascaded through "Excalibur," "Natural Born Killers," "Jackass" and
other movies, and sharpened the political satire on "Late Night With
Conan O'Brien," in scenes depicting Vice President Dick Cheney "dancing
as the skeleton of death," notes Savia.
If you go
- What: The Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, soloists and
185 singers from the Philharmonic Chorus, the Owensboro (Ky.) Symphony
Chorus and the Evansville Children's Choirs will perform Carl Orff's
"Carmina Burana" on a program with Franz Schubert's "Unfinished"
Symphony No. 8.
- When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Box office opens at 6 p.m., pre-concert talk begins at 7 p.m.
- Where: The Victory
- Admission: $15 to $59 for adults, $12 to $59 for children 12 and younger, $10 at the door for students after 7 p.m.
- Information: Call 425-5050 or go to http://www.evansvillephilharmonic.org/ online.
- Broadcast: A digital recording of the concert will air at 7 p.m. May 11 on WNIN-88.3FM.
Savia will think of someone else, however, when he conducts "Carmina
Burana" in The Victory on Saturday, leading the Evansville Philharmonic
Orchestra, soloists and a massive chorus of men, women and children
from the Tri-State in the philharmonic's final concert of the season.
STORY TOOLS
For the orchestra's music director, it's always been Laura's song.
Savia took the conductor's score for "Carmina Burana" with him to the
hospital when his wife, Kathryn "Kitty" Savia, went into labor in May
1982, with their older daughter, Laura.
Savia wasn't looking for distraction. He had to conduct the Florida
Symphony's performance of "Carmina Burana" in a couple of days and
needed to study the music whenever he got the chance, he said.
When Laura was born, on May 2, 1982, doctors told the Savias their
daughter had multiple congenital heart disorders and would require
surgery in Gainesville, Fla., if she were to live.
Kitty and Laura Savia took an ambulance to Gainesville, while Alfred
Savia, who had no backup to conduct for him, stayed behind to finish
learning the music and lead the orchestra's rehearsals and performance.
News of the surgery's success only came during a break in the final
rehearsal.
When he conducted the concert the next day, "There was this massive
energy," Savia recalled before he conducted the Evansville Philharmonic
in a 1997 performance. "It was the most electrically charged
performance of my life."
That memory resonated in Savia's 1997 "Carmina Burana" performance with
the Evansville Philharmonic, right through to the end of the concert,
when a 15-year-old Laura Savia walked out on stage to present her
father a bouquet.
She won't bear him flowers in The Victory this year, however. In what
Alfred Savia considers a weird coincidence, or perhaps occurrence of
fate, Laura Savia will be in an apartment in New York recovering from a
recent open-heart surgery, this time to replace a valve.
It should be the final heart repair she'll need, allowing her to return
to her work in June as a literary associate with New York's Atlantic
Theater Co., says her father.
He, Kitty and their younger daughter, Julie Savia, went to New York to
be with Laura when she had the surgery. Kitty remained, to help with
recovery, while Alfred Savia returned from New York to pick up
rehearsals for Saturday's performance.
"What's weird is that when I scheduled 'Carmina Burana' I had no idea (Laura) would be going back for surgery now," he says.
The fortune described in the cantata's most famous passage, "O
Fortuna," which describes the wheel of fate, has once again smiled upon
the Savias, making Saturday's performance another personal celebration,
says the conductor.
For those in the audience, however, the music's drama throbs through
Orff's powerful, often percussive musical settings of medieval Latin
odes, laments and drinking songs about fate, wealth, loss and the pains
and pleasures of the flesh, the spirits and gambling.
And the concert will celebrate another Evansville woman who will come home for the concert.
DeVonna Lawrence, a classically trained gospel and opera singer who has
toured across the country and across oceans with 3 Mo' Divas, will
return to Evansville and The Victory as featured soprano soloist
Saturday.
Other guest artists include tenor Steven Stolen, and baritone Richard
Zeller, performing with a 185-voice choir drawn from the Evansville
Philharmonic Chorus, the Owensboro (Ky.) Symphony Chorus and the
Evansville Children's Choirs.
The concert also will showcase the orchestra itself, in a performance of Franz Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony No. 8.
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