Fantasia Page #3

Pegasus the flying horse

and his entire family,

the centaurs, those strange creatures

that are half man and half horse...

and their girlfriends,

the centaurettes.

Later on, we meet our old friend

Baccus, the god of wine,

presiding over a baccchanal.

The party is interrupted

by a storm.

and now we see Vulcan

forging thunderbolts...

and handing them over

to the king of all the gods, Zeus.

who plays darts

with them.

As the storm clears, we see Iris,

the goddess of the rainbow...

and Apollo, driving his sun chariot

across the sky.

And then morpheus,

the god of sleep,

covers everything

with his cloak of night...

as Diana, using the new moon

as a bowl,

shoots an arrow of fire

that spangles the sky with stars.

Now we are going to do...

one of the most famous and

popular ballets ever written--

the "Dance of the Hours"...

from Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda".

It's a pageant of

the hours of the day.

We see first

a group of dancers...

in costumes to suggest

the delicate light of dawn.

Then a second

group enters...

dressed to represent

the brilliant light of noon day.

As these withdraw,

a third group enters...

in costumes that suggest

the delicate tones...

of early evening.

Then a last group,

all in black,

the sommer hours

of the night.

Suddenly, the orchestra bursts

into a brilliant finale...

in wich the hours of darkness...

are overcome

by the hours of light.

All this takes place in the great hall,

with its garden beyond,

of the palace of Duke Alvise,

a Venetian nobleman.

The last number in

our "Fantasia" program...

is a combination of

two pieces of music...

so utterly different in construction and mood

that they set each

other off perfectly.

The first is

"A Night on Bald Mountain"...

by one of Russia's

greatest composers,

Modeste Moussorgsky.

The second is Franz Schubert's

world-famous "Ave Maria."

Musically and dramatically,

we have here a picture...

of the struggle between

the profane and the sacred.

"Bald Mountain,"

according to tradition,

is the gatherin place

of Satan and his followers.

Here on Walpurgisnacht, which is

the equivalent of our own Halloween,

the creatures of evil

gather to worship their master.

Under his spell,

they dance furiously...

until the coming of dawn

and the sounds of church bells...

send the infernal army

slinking back...

into their abodes of darkness.

And then we hear

the "Ave Maria,"

with its message

of the triumph and hope of life...

over the powers

of despair and death.

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