Incredible! Carmina Burana comes to Punta Gorda This Saturday -- Thank you Maestro Wada

The first time I experienced Carmina Burana was at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.  I sat overwhelmed as the powerful masterpiece swept over me like a tital wave. With its pulsating, rhythmic music and haunting Latin and German chants, Carl Orff's work is somewhere between religious happening and magnificent opera or musical.  

 Latin for "Songs from Beuern,"Carmina Burana was the name given to a manuscript of some 250 medieval poems and dramatic texts .   The pieces  were written by students and clergy almost entirely in Medieval Latin with a few in Middle High German and Old French. The often erotic and baudy verses have a "Christian simplicity" at the surface infused with pagan lust.  Long hidden, they were rediscovered in a monastery in Germany in the 19th century, and later set to music by Mr. Orff.  

His idea was total theatre.   He described his composition as “secular songs for soloists and choruses, accompanied by instruments and magic images".  Orff  made use of some two dozen texts of the 13th century poems with new melodies to create what became a classical work appealing to modern tastes.  

This is the truly amazing part.  This wonderful but complex work, rarely performed anywhere,  will be presented this Saturday by the Charlotte Symphony in our little town of Punta Gorda with over 100 voices from the local area.  Now here is why I am writing this.  If there are any tickets left, get them and go.  Carmina Burana is a musical tour de force being brought to us by the incredibly talented Maestro Wada right here in our town at an ridiculously affordable price. (And if the young woman I heard sing Ave Maria recently is indicative of the voices Maestro Wada has collected for this one-time only performance, I expect this to be a truly exceptional event.)  Come on $35 for a ticket -- do you know what you would pay to see a creative achievement of this kind in New York.  

Listen to the most familiar piece from the work "O Fortuna"which you may recognize. It has been used in many movie soundtracks:  http://www.anthea2.freeuk.com/carminaburana/

When:  7:30 Saturday, November 6

Cost: $35 adults, $12 students under 18

Where: Center for the Performing Arts, Punta Gorda