• Andre Previn/London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, soloists: Orff: Carmina Burana (EMI)
  
  alternative performances:


• Eugen Jochum/Orchestra and Chorus of the German Opera, Berlin, and soloists (Deutsche Grammophon)


• Marin Alsop/Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, soloists (Naxos)

For the past five years I have been researching a couple of branches of my ethnically complicated family tree. After hours spent swapping documents, pictures, and stories with relatives, to say nothing of sacrificing what's left of my eyesight to microfilm readers, I had a stack of records leading me to the conclusion that my family conducts many of its major events -- births, weddings, burials -- in the Garden State. If I ever design a personal coat of arms, Sooner or later, you're going to New Jersey is going to be my motto of choice.

If New Jersey appears more or less unavoidable for my family, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana fills the same function for anybody with a bit of casual exposure to classical music. Even if your tastes incline more to action movies and Sean Hannity broadcasts than Live from Lincoln Center, chances are excellent that you have heard portions of CB, particularly its popular opening and closing chorus, "O Fortuna."

Familiarity in this case breeds cliche and tremendous misunderstanding. Let's face it: if you're watching a movie trailer and the pulsing, pounding, relentless "O Fortuna" blasts through the theater, I doubt that you're silently translating the Latin text over your popcorn. You simply register that blend of excitement and fear engendered by the music. Who knew that a secular cantata based on medieval texts had such staying power in popular culture?

But you don't have to sign up for a course in Middle High German to appreciate Carmina Burana in its entirety. The liner notes for your CD likely contain the original Latin, German, and French text with translations, perhaps even multilingual translations. Once you know something about the work, however, you can drop the text perusal and allow yourself to respond to the passion, energy, and humor of the music and especially its performers.

First of all, let's clear up the matter of mistaken identity. Whatever you might have heard, Carmina Burana, particularly "O Fortuna," is not to be confused with the soundtrack for The Omen, or even John Barry's choral music for the opening titles of The Lion in Winter. "O Fortuna" is in fact a reflection on the random and treacherous nature of fate. If the members of the chorus sound desperate as the music builds to a climax, they have good reason!

But don't stop there.

I'll bet that any cantatas in your CD collection were written to summon your thoughts to God, to sacrifice, to the heavenly rewards awaiting a faithful servant.

Carmina Burana is not that kind of cantata, people. Here you'll find choruses and solos on the pleasures of dancing and drinking, the seductive power of make-up ("Chramer, gip die varwe mir"), and even a horny baritone's barroom lament, "Estuans Interius" ("Burning Inside"), that proves people haven't changed a bit since the 13th century. And the only sacrifice represented here is a young woman's yielding to her lover ("In Trutina," "Dulcissime"). This is definitely not for the abstinence-only crowd.

Carmina Burana was formed from 13th texts and 20th century music, and if the work has a straightforward simplicity, the arrangements require an orchestra rather than a medieval music ensemble. Pay particular attention to that percussion section.

Performing Carmina Burana requires soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists, plus an adult chorus and a children's choir. Those soprano solos contain some brief but dazzling passages -- lovely to hear, and emotionally charged with the right performer. The baritone represents, in turn, that lonely guy in the tavern and an unapologetic abbot given to drinking and gambling. Our tenor soloist, most unusually, is enlisted to sing the lament of a hapless swan being roasted for a feast!

If you're ready to surrender to the terrors and delights of Carmina Burana, the next question is which recording to choose. That can be daunting, as CB could likely compete with Handel's Messiah and Faure's Requiem for the title of Most-Recorded Classical Choral Work. Indeed, sometimes it appears there's an additional CD every week: remastered reissues, budget recordings, newly recorded performances at full price.

And it often seems as though every baritone of note has performed the solos in Carmina Burana: Thomas Allen, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hakan Hagegard, Simon Keenlyside, Christian Gerhaher, and Harve Presnell. Yes, that is the same Harve Presnell you know from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Paint Your Wagon, and Fargo.

And the sopranos who have sung those sweetly erotic solos include Lucia Popp, Kathleen Battle, June Anderson, Gundula Janowitz, Sheila Armstrong, and Arleen Auger.

So I've tossed a few possibilities your way: the stalwart DG recording with Eugen Jochum conducting, Andrew Previn's now remastered version on EMI, and of course Marin Alsop's Naxos disc, recorded with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

If you are looking for a classic performance, one with the imprimatur of Carl Orff himself, look no further than Eugen Jochum's Deutsche Grammophon recording. The soprano soloist, Gundula Janowitz, is particularly affecting, bringing youthful vibrancy and emotional resonance to what is a moment of ecstatic surrender.

Previn's recording has a real treat due to the choice of baritone soloist: Thomas Allen. If Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau brings energy and passion to the Jochum recording, Thomas Allen's virile performance on the Previn disc is the more vocally satisfying, richer and fuller in tone.

Sheila Armstrong, the soprano soloist on the EMI recording, has a silvery, supple voice that sends shivers down your spine, though she comes off as just a bit mannered next to Janowitz.

Alsop's Naxos recording is very listenable and her soloists are pleasing. It's a bit hard for this recording to push its way to the head of the queue, given all the CB discs out there, but it's worth reviewing.

A note of caution: If you are listening to Carmina Burana with earphones or over your home sound system in the presence of easily startled family members or pets, watch the volume levels. The opening and closing choruses in particular drop to a hum at certain moments and then build to a window-rattling climax. Cold showers are optional.

CD: Bryn Terfel, various artists: A Song in My Heart

Back in the days when the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel sported long hair, one of my Olsson's colleagues took one look at the cover photograph of the latest Terfel CD and deadpanned, "Hey, Meat Loaf has a classical album." You can make the case for or against the baritone's resemblance to the former Marvin Aday -- yes, the guy who brought us "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," among other rock classics -- but no one would confuse the two when it comes to actual musical output. Terfel has been journeying through the classical baritone's repertoire and has proven how exciting it all can be.

In his most recent album, A Song in My Heart, we finally have a collection that begins to do justice to a rich and varied career. It's a reasonably priced two-disc set, almost two and a half hours of music, and filled with an astonishing selection of material. I can rattle off a roster of composers -- Hector Berlioz, Gustav Mahler, John Rutter, Robert Schumann, Arthur Sullivan, Giuseppe Verdi -- and caution you that that's merely a partial list.

This is as broad a collection as you are going to find for a vocal artist. Folk songs, lieder, arias, hymns, and show tunes are all here, and as you would expect, the mood, arrangement, and participating artists vary. Sometimes there's just a piano paired with that beauteous baritone, particularly with the lieder, including Schumann's setting of Heinrich Heine's "Du bist wie eine Blume" -- coincidentally, the very first German-language poem I ever learned by heart.

Sometimes orchestras and choruses appear: How could anyone perform "They Call the Wind Maria" without a stalwart chorus of men? Then there are the duets: Thomas Allen is Jack Point to Terfel's Wilfred Shadbolt in a selection from The Yeomen of the Guard, and the vivacious mezzo Cecilia Bartoli partners Terfel for "Il core vi dono, bell'idolo mio" from Cosi fan tutte. Alas, no one thought to include texts in the liner notes!

Perhaps you won't particularly miss the texts, as Terfel has not only developed that radiant, supple voice but also good diction and linguistic versatility. It is a pleasure to hear him sing in German, for instance, and of course he's a natural for both English- and Welsh-language hymns and folk songs.

This album actually includes two performances of "Amazing Grace," and it's the second, simpler version -- one featured on the British TV show Songs of Praise -- that I regard as the real find. The performance is stripped down to voice and guitar, free of embellishment, and possesses a disarming purity and humility. The song closes out the second disc, which is just as well, as all I wanted to do was to either keep silent or play that track again. Yes, it is possible for an American to hear "Amazing Grace" as though for the first time.

In fact, Terfel is disarmingly at ease with the American idiom. His wistful, Celtic-influenced reading of "Shenandoah" could inspire you to embark on a road trip across Virginia (Senators James Webb and John Warner, call your offices!), and his interpretation of "Deep River" proves similarly moving.

You'd be disappointed -- and rightly so -- if the album didn't include a tip of the hat to the rich tradition of Welsh male choirs. Set your mind at rest; we've got the lullaby "Suo-Gan," the hymn "Cwm Rhondda," and of course "Ar Hyd Y Nos" (better known as "All Through the Night").

The album's real surprises, though, emerge in the bonus tracks, 1978 recordings of an adolescent Bryn Terfel performing the Welsh folk songs "Y March Glass" and "Glas Y Dorlan." It's before the voice change, before the baritone that sounded across the world, and yet it is a mesmerizing performance.

Whether you view this album as a tutorial in the career of Bryn Terfel, vocal accompaniment for your myriad moods, or a musical This Is Your Life for a singer very much in his prime, listen at your own risk. You'll find this charismatic Welshman impossible to resist.

CD: Kiri Te Kanawa with Sir John Pritchard/the London Philharmonic Orchestra: Verdi and Puccini Arias (with bonus tracks)

I have to confess that I'm cranky about some of the givens of life in the DC area in 2007: people barricaded behind their iPods and free newspapers, daily warnings of security threats and pollution levels, and of course cellphones going off in cinemas, concert halls, and chapels. We're connected by technology and divided just the same.

And there is genuine sorrow in the recent loss of so many artists, among them singers Beverly Sills, Regine Crespin, and Jerry Hadley, and filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. The latter's Swedish-language film of Mozart's The Magic Flute, featuring the wonderful Hakan Hagegard as Papageno, provided one of the happiest memories of my teenaged years, which surely sets some sort of record on the irony scale.

In a count-your-musical-blessings exercise I took out Kiri Te Kanawa's Verdi and Puccini Arias, a standard from the Sony full-price catalogue in former years and now reissued as a midline product, with a twist: bonus tracks to give you a more fleshed-out picture of Te Kanawa's career.

Actually, the title of the CD is a bit misleading, as the current track listing features no fewer than eight Puccini selections, though some of them are brief, and three Verdi arias. The extras include two tracks from Mozart's Don Giovanni, a selection from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, and the "Pie Jesu" from Durufle's Requiem. This barely warms us up as far as the breadth and versatility of Te Kanawa's stage and recorded performances are concerned, but it does provide a reminder, as if one were needed, of the essential beauty of her voice.

Back in the 1980s, Madison Avenue and the movies made much of Te Kanawa's interpretations of Puccini: "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi was pressed into service more than once, most memorably in James Ivory's luminous film adaptation of A Room with a View, which also featured "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" from La Rondine. If you sigh with happiness at the thought of hearing both of those again, I can assure you that they're here in the collection.

As you might expect, there is also much darker material on the album, as Te Kanawa plays a series of betrayed and bereft women: Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Violetta in La Traviata, Tosca, Manon. Alas, there are no liner notes or texts, but the emotions need little translation from the Italian.

Humperdinck's "Der kleine Sandmann bin ich" is a rather unusual choice for the album, given all that has come before, but Te Kanawa approaches the material with a beguiling tenderness. The recording then comes to a equally gentle but more somber, reflective close with the Durufle "Pie Jesu."

Kiri Te Kanawa has, as of this writing, retired from the opera stage but not from the concert hall. I read that she has a farewell tour in the works for the 2007-2008 season, but no dates for the DC area have been posted online.

DVD: Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Jane Austen film adaptations, whether they take the form of miniseries, Bollywood musical extravaganzas, or hip Hollywood comedies, inspire vigorous and occasionally acrimonious debates among fans of the novels and movies alike. For example: Will the women of the English-speaking world ever accept any actor besides Colin Firth in the role of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice? Who makes a better Emma Woodhouse, Kate Beckinsale or Gwyneth Paltrow? And how could any woman turn away Alan Rickman (definitely out of Snape mode) in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility? Discuss.

Well, we're not done with the Austen screenplays yet, given that a biopic, Becoming Jane, is strolling genteelly into theaters this weekend, and new adaptations of the novels are on their way to American television. Brew another pot of tea, gentle readers and viewers, and settle in for the long haul.

But even with all the current Austen projects, I want to reach further back, to the first half of the 20th century, when the movie studio system and the Hays Office held sway, and literary adaptations emerged on screen in forms we might not recognize today. Our destination: Robert Z. Leonard's 1940 film of Pride and Prejudice.

In the summer of 1989, not long after the death of Laurence Olivier, a friend and I rented the 1940 Pride and Prejudice. Having read, re-read, and loved the novel, I was at first taken aback by the alterations to the story. Characters and plot had been trimmed, and the more biting satire softened. Even the gowns were Victorian and not Regency garb.

I soon came to realize, however, that the film was a reflection of its times, with a screenplay adapted -- by Jane Murfin and Aldous Huxley, no less -- from what had been a successful stage production. Some of Jane Austen's humor and social commentary, such as the identification of the Bennets' silly cousin Mr. Collins as a clergyman, did not survive the attentions of the Hays Office. Oh, how times have changed!

In spite of all, I took a liking to the movie, watching it repeatedly over the years, particularly in times of sorrow and exhaustion. The actors, the screenplay, the very score became my friends, alongside Jane Austen's novels and some of their other film adaptations.

A young Laurence Olivier is convincingly rigid as the proud, wealthy Fitzwilliam Darcy, whose disastrous first encounter with Elizabeth Bennet (Greer Garson) sets off a battle of wills. But if Olivier is at first convincingly disdainful, he then gradually unveils a touching vulnerability -- and ardor. By the time his on-screen exchanges with Garson take a serious turn, he's fairly smoldering across the pianoforte at her. You can almost hear the sighs of the women at those 1940s screenings.

Given her roles in films such as Random Harvest and Mrs. Miniver, Greer Garson seems an unusual choice for Lizzy Bennet, more chic Londoner than English rose. But she has the wit and intelligence for the part, and is a worthy sparring partner to Olivier. The role demands a strong, assertive woman, and Garson is more than up to the challenge.

Aside from watching the battle of the sexes unfold, much of the film's fun is in cataloging the line-up of familiar faces from the golden age of Hollywood:

Mary Boland, so memorable in The Women, is here cast as the ultimate desperate housewife: Mrs. Bennet, the mother of five daughters with no dowries and a decided shortage of prospective suitors.

Edmund Gwenn is enshrined forever in popular imagination for his role in Miracle on 34th Street but was also a memorable ensemble player in films such as Foreign Correspondent, Between Two Worlds, and The Trouble with Harry. His sly, snarky Mr. Bennet is one of the film's delights.

Frieda Inescort was a stage-trained actress who never quite got the treatment from the studios she deserved but nevertheless won roles in a number of classic films, appearing opposite Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland and Bela Lugosi in Return of the Vampire. Inescort, using that divinely icy voice to perfection, has a triumph here as Caroline Bingley, snob, romantic rival, and obstacle to the Bennet sisters' happiness.

A heart-breakingly young Maureen O'Sullivan is cast as Garson's sensitive, lovelorn sister Jane.

Ann Rutherford (yes, from the Andy Hardy series) plays the cheeky youngest Bennet sister, Lydia, who sets in motion as much scandal as the Production Code will allow.

Marsha Hunt, a pretty and stylish actress in private life, is enlisted to don spectacles and sing off-key as the family bluestocking, Mary. The scene where Garson reacts to Hunt's butchering of "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" is a classic.

Melville Cooper, an instantly recognizable character actor, steals the show as the obsequious Mr. Collins. That's all I'm going to tell you; just enjoy.

And best of all, Edna May Oliver, star of the Hildegarde Withers series, duly intimidates everyone as Olivier's terrifyingly snobbish aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Herbert Stothart, a contract composer for MGM, provides the music, and if you don't recognize the name, you have undoubtedly been exposed to his arrangements and compositions in films a diverse as The Wizard of Oz, After the Thin Man, and A Night at the Opera.

Stothart uses musical themes extensively, employing familiar passages to establish character and setting. For example, the arrival of the dotty and nervous Mrs. Bennet is heralded by "The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks" from Pictures at an Exhibition, and "Now Is the Month of Maying" reminds us that we are in an England village, and at the loveliest time of the year.

The DVD extras include the theatrical trailer, which makes a nice change from today's predictable fare: not an explosion in sight, and no Don LaFontaine narration (He was, after all, only a baby in 1940). For some reason the DVD also includes a cartoon about a bear and a short dealing with the U.S. Navy -- the better to recreate that 1940 movie-going experience, I suppose.