On Wednesday morning, September 24, Mr. Mauceri was reunited with his Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for the first time in two years as the surprise opening for the Walt Disney Company's annual rollout. This event brings some 2,500 upper management personnel to the Kodak Theater from all over the world. Mr. Mauceri conducted a special half hour orchestral work of Disney music, including themes from such films as Pirates of the Caribbean, Enchanted, Snow White, Peter Pan, Pearl Harbor, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, all synchronized to a cinematic montage.
The program, hosted by Dick Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, continued with appearances by Dr. John, Miley Cyrus, John Travolta and Johnny Depp. After the performance, Mr. Mauceri flew back to Chicago for rehearsals at the Lyric Opera for a new production of Georges Bizet's les Pecheurs de perles which opens on October 6.
"The Pearl Fishers represents opera as ritual, rather than opera as drama," says the celebrated American conductor. "Like Parsifal, Aida, The Magic Flute, and Fidelio, it treats the audience much like a congregation and takes it on a journey of redemptive action in an exotic locale. This opera's unique ingredients are not merely its foreign-ness and the beauty of Bizet's music. It is the fundamental empathy for the human condition that makes Pearl Fishers so attractive and moving. All the oaths sworn by the three protagonists must be broken to achieve a higher resolution and transformation. That, above all, is the unique nature of this extraordinary opera." - note for Lyric Opera program
Mr. Mauceri will share the podium with UNCSA's three conducting fellows on the evening of November 22 when he conducts the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra. Andrew McAfee, Valentino Piran and Konstantin Dobroykov will lead the first half of the concert, and after intermission, Mr. Mauceri will direct Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Mr. Mauceri studied this work with Leonard Bernstein and first performed it in 1986 with the London Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Bernstein and Queen Elizabeth II in attendance. He has conducted the work with many major symphony orchestras, most recently with the Atlanta Symphony.