Celebrate the closing of the Shadow Visionaries exhibition with a voice and piano concert that draws a direct line between Romanticism and Surrealism. Works by Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Francis Poulenc ruminate on ambiguity, liminality, love, irony, irrationality, absurdity, and the grotesque. Hector Berlioz’s crepuscular and revelatory Nuits d’été (Summer Nights) is the centerpiece of this program. Nuits d’été is a group of six songs based on poems by Théophile Gautier, the composer’s friend and neighbor. The poems were selected from Gautier’s La Comédie de la Mort (The Comedy of Death), published in 1838. Rodolphe Bresdin’s print titled The Comedy of Death, on view in the Shadow Visionaries exhibition, draws inspiration from this same source.

The concert is performed by pianist David Kaplan and soprano Ariadne Greif. Kaplan has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. Greif brings what the Times has called her “luminous, expressive voice” back to the Clark after performing here in 2024 with the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC).

Program

Francis Poulenc

Fiançailles pour rire, FP 101

Hector Berlioz

Nuits d’été, Op. 7

Intermission

Franz Liszt

Sonata in B Minor, S. 178

Francis Poulenc

Sanglots from Banalités, FP 107

Tickets $20 ($16 members, $14 college students, $10 children 17 and under).