Coeur d'Alene Symphony performs music from Carmen

The Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra will perform music from “Carmen” at a concert at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 28, at the Schuler Events Center on the North Idaho College campus in Coeur d’Alene.

The North Idaho Youth Symphony will join the orchestra on stage during the second half of the show.

Coeur d’Alene Symphony Orchestra Maestro Danh Pham will be joined by Phillip Baldwin as guest conductor.

“Baldwin’s tenure as concertmaster and associate conductor with our Coeur d’Alene Symphony family has been so vitally important,” Pham said.

The concert will feature Bizet’s "Suite No. 2" from Carmen. Today, Carmen is one of the world’s favorite operas, but its composer never knew that success when it was composed in 1820. The opera is set in Seville, Spain, and written in French by Georges Bizet. The story follows a gypsy girl’s love triangle with a bullfighter and a freedom-fighter in the context of a burgeoning revolution. When it finally premiered in Paris in 1875, critics had no use for an ill-mannered girl who is killed at the end by an army deserter. Most then considered it a failure. After Bizet’s death, Ernest Guiraud compiled Suite No. 2, music familiar today to Western ears.

Following the music from Carmen, musicians will perform Mussorgsky’s "Night on Bald Mountain." The symphonic poem was inspired by an ancient Russian legend which tells of nighttime celebrations that took place on St. John's Eve on a barren hill called Lysa Hora near Kyiv. Chernobog the demon led the revelry until the sounds of the far-off bell of a little church in the village dispersed the evil spirits. Five years after Mussorgsky's death, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov published an orchestra arrangement of the work, which appeared in the 1940 Walt Disney film "Fantasia," Night on Bald Mountain remains an audience favorite.

Tickets cost $25 for adults, $18 for 65-and-over, $10 for students with ID and military/veterans with ID. NIC students with ID and children 2 to 12 (with one adult or senior admission) will be admitted free.

To buy tickets, visit cdasymphony.org/tickets or call 208-765-3833 with questions.