Brno Philharmonic
Mikel Toms, cond.

Recorded in Brno, Czech Republic, June 2016


Notes on Overture and Intermezzo


To emphasize my suggestion to conjoin these two numbers into an orchestral concert piece, I designated them together as my op. 51a.  Opus 51 proper is the opera Strange Case, whose libretto was fashioned by writer Bernard Cowan after the novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.  (I renounced the original title, Jekyll and Hyde, after a musical with that name came out in Great Britain.) 

The Overture was, in keeping with long tradition, written last.  It takes the form of an arch, with music representing the clinking test tubes in Dr. Henry Jekyll's laboratory along the outer edges.  Flanking that on either end are the two halves of an aria shared by Jekyll in his first scene and Hyde in the opera’s finale.  Between these come references to scenes in which:  first, Jekyll’s lawyer hears from his friend Enfield about an incident the latter witnessed in which Hyde mercilessly ran over a defenseless little girl; second, jaunty music associated with the friends' peripatetic conversations; third, a waltz that plays when Jekyll hallucinates departed women from his life stepping out of his study’s full-length mirror to dance with him; fourth, a crowd scene in which a town crier, whilst announcing Hyde’s latest murders to the populace, bespeaks the Crown’s firm resolve to ensnare the evil menace; and finally, the moments in the last scene of the opera in which Hyde gleefully dances about, quite convinced that the body he had been sharing with Jekyll is now inexorably his.
 
I conceived the Intermezzo dramatically as a means of portraying Dr. Jekyll's formidable transition from self-justifying in the opera’s early scenes to self-loathing in the finale.  The company that put through the commission had an ancillary ballet corps, and there was a period in which I was convinced that it could feature well here.  Hence the following notes to the choreographer, my effort to match (at the risk of sounding simplistic) the dramatic argument I had devised with the flow of the music.

The opening melody in the clarinet’s chalumeau register depicts Jekyll in the depths of despair.  The initially spare instrumental forces multiply, and the music gains in intensity both dynamically and rhythmically as memories crowd in on the doctor’s consciousness.  As he recalls more and more of the evil deeds he perpetrated in the guise of Hyde, the opening theme returns for the full orchestra.  The development which follows is a storm of compunction, whipping him into utter distraction.  Presently the glass chimes herald an alternative realm in which guilt is absolved.  The clarinet now plays a seductive melody, luring Jekyll to that death which alone can afford him surcease of mental anguish.  The full orchestra reiterates the theme enthusiastically.  Jekyll cannot resist its urgings.  When the solo clarinet (specter of Death, as it were) returns, its theme is more elaborate and convincing.  The doctor has been swayed.  He seeks to realize his death wish in the suicide attempt which opens the next scene, the opera’s finale.

The opera, including of course these excerpts, is dedicated to the gentleman who saw me through its completion, Spencer Harper III.  It was he, by the way, who convinced me that a traditional overture befitted the work.


Victor Frost
3 X 98
New York City

Strange Case:  Overture and Intermezzo, op. 51a

from the opera Strange Case, op. 51

Brno Philharmonic
Mikel Toms, cond.

Recorded in Brno, Czech Republic, June 2016

Strange Case Intermezzo

Strange Case Overture

Scores are available for study or performance for the asking, in pdf form or as hard copy.

VFrost2468@gmail.com

Strange Case Overture

Victor Frost — composer