Ravinia 2025 Issue 5

Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave at Kanagawa De l’aube à midi sur la mer ( From Dawn to Noon on the Sea ) captures the ocean’s exotic and vari- able allure. A pentatonic oboe tune, possessing a faint Eastern character, rises from the rolling waves. The cellos introduce a luxurious theme in dancing triplet rhythms, coupled with a counter- melody in the French horns. A glorious midday hymn, begun by the horns and bassoons and then quickly extended to the entire orchestra, culminates this “sketch.” Jeux de vagues ( Play of the Waves ) offers a rich array of musical figures embodying the delicate swirls and graceful ed- dies found in the open water. Debussy replaced his original title for the third piece— The Wind Dances with the Sea , perhaps too similar in char- acter to the preceding scherzo—with the more dynamic Dialogue du vent et de la mer ( Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea ). This blustery move- ment pits the effervescent wind instruments against the restless strings. A tempest was brewing in Debussy’s personal life as he turned out this sea triptych. When he began La mer in the summer of 1903, his marriage to Rosalie (“Lilly”) Texier appeared blissful. In fact, Debussy prepared the first sketches during a visit with her parents at Bichain, where the couple of- ten roamed the countryside together. However, after returning to Paris in October, Debussy met Emma Bardac Emma Bardac, an amateur singer and the wife of a French banker. Exactly how his relationship with Emma evolved over the next several months remains unclear, but in July 1904 Debussy aban- doned his wife of five years to spend the summer with her on Jersey, an island off the northwest coast of France, and later Dieppe. Two inscriptions on the published score point- ed unequivocally to the romance with Emma. The first—“In gratitude to the month of June 1904”—alludes to a heart-to-heart talk the com- poser had with Emma a month before their three-week coastal liaison. Next, Debussy notat- ed the acrostic “A.l.p.M.,” which stands for “ À la petite Mienne ” (roughly, “To my little one”). One manuscript source contains a more expressive dedication: “ pour la p.m. dont les yeux rient dans l’ombre ” (“for my little one whose eyes laugh in the shadow”). Lilly, understandably distraught, attempted suicide on October 13. (Though her self-in- flicted gunshot wound eventually healed, sur- geons were unable to remove the bullet.) That desperate action provoked a public scandal that severely damaged Debussy’s personal reputation and permanently alienated many colleagues. Newspapers published sympathetic accounts of Lilly’s suicide attempt, and the playwright Hen- ry Bataille based his drama La femme nue ( The Shady Woman ) on l’affaire Debussy . Claude and Emma divorced their respective spouses in 1905 and, slightly more than two weeks after the pre- miere of La mer , finally experienced immense joy amidst the dark controversy surrounding their relationship with the birth of their daugh- ter, Claude-Emma (Chou-Chou). They remar- ried on January 20, 1908. Meanwhile, La mer was unveiled at the Con- certs Lamoureux, under the direction of Camille Chevillard, on October 15, 1905. Notwithstand- ing the initial brutalization from the press, these “symphonic sketches” greatly increased admira- tion and respect for Debussy the musician. –Program notes © 2025 Todd E. Sullivan LIDIYA YANKOVSKAYA Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed ad- vocate for Slavic masterpieces and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. She has conducted more than 40 world premieres, including 17 operas, and her strength as a vision- ary collaborator has guided new perspectives on staged and symphonic repertoire, from Bizet’s Carmen and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades to Florence Price and Sergei Prokofiev. Her trans- formative tenure as Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater earned consistent recognition from the Chicago Tribune , which named her Chicagoan of the Year in 2020. Yankovskaya’s 2024/25 season opened with her Australian de- but leading Puccini’s Il trittico at Opera Australia, which resulted in an immediate reengagement for a new production of Carmen in 2025. She also conducted Puccini’s La bohème at San Di- ego Opera and returned to Washington National Opera to lead Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs . Yankovskaya has been traversing con- cert halls across the United States as well, leading orchestras in Nashville, Miami, Grand Rapids, Rochester, Albany, and Los Angeles. Returning to the UK, she debuted with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and joined a longtime collabora- tor, sarod master Amjad Ali Khan, at the Lon- don Philharmonic. Yankovskaya has recently conducted Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at Ham- burg State Opera, Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle at English National Opera, Dvořák’s Rusalka at Santa Fe Opera, Carmen at Houston Grand Op- era, Kamala Sankaram’s Taking Up Serpents at Washington National Opera, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera. On the concert stage, highlights have included appearances with the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics and the Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and National Sym- phonies, as well as leading Julia Wolfe’s Anthra- cite Fields at Carnegie Hall. Under Yankovskaya’s leadership, Chicago Opera Theater established the Vanguard Initiative, a two-year residency for emerging opera composers that she continues to lead as Artistic Director, enriching the repertory with new voices that resonate with today’s audi- ences. Lidiya Yankovskaya, an alumna of Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors and the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, is making her Ravinia debut. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUG. 4 – AUG. 17, 2025 68 TODDROSENBERG