Herrmann and Persephone

Fragments from Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights will be performed today, November 7, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania:

The Bucknell Opera Company will mark its 20th anniversary with a gala concert on Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Rooke Recital Hall of the Weis Music Building.
The program, which is free and open to the public, is directed by Catherine Payn, associate professor of music at Bucknell.
The concert includes music from a wide range of favorite operas including “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” “Merry Wives of Windsor,” “Lakme,” “La Cenerentola” and “Don Pasquale” as well as works from several contemporary American operas including “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” “Susannah” and “Tartuffe” as well as “Trouble in Tahiti” by Leonard Bernstein and “Wuthering Heights” by Bernard Herrmann. (The Daily Item)

Tomorrow, November 8, a talk at the Atlantic Cape's Mays Landing Campus (New Jersey):

Library Speaker Series Event to Focus on Girls' Literature

Writer and professor Holly Blackford will present "The Persephone Myth in Classic and Contemporary Girls' Literature," at the second installment of the William Spangler Library Speaker Series, 2 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 8, at Atlantic Cape Community College.
In her lecture, Blackford, professor of English at Rutgers University, Camden, will present her research into how the Persephone-Demeter myth functions in classic and contemporary girls' literature from Wuthering Heights and Little Women to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Twilight. In the myth, the goddess of agriculture Demeter loses her only daughter, Persephone, when Hades, lord of the underworld, abducts her. In mourning for her lost child, Demeter lets the fruits of the earth wither. The fertility of the earth can only be restored when the gods return her child. They agree, provided that Persephone has not eaten of the underworld. Unfortunately, Persephone has eaten seeds of the pomegranate; thereafter she must spend the season of fall and winter as Queen of the underworld, returning to her mother in spring.

Categories: Music, Opera, Talks, Wuthering Heights