Dichterliebe (In Four Seasons)

Robert Schumann was unwell in the years preceding the composition of Dichterliebe. The year 1840, however, proved to be one of unexpected delight. He was finally able to marry the woman he loved and coveted, Clara Wieck, the daughter of his former teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a musical icon in Leipzig. It seems odd, then, that after a five-year struggle to obtain the right to marry the woman he loved and the constant success of such works as Davidsbundertanze, Op. 6, Kinderszenen, Op. 15 and the song cycles Liederkreis, Op. 24 and Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42, he should turn to such a dark subject as the one presented in his sixteen-song cycle Dichterliebe, set to texts by the German poet Heinrich Heine. "A Poet's Love" is a murky tragedy with its early flourish of love, its eventual deterioration and the poet's despair of every loving again, even preferring death to a new attempt. American poet Elizabeth Kirschner, who teaches at Boston College and who has collaborated with many modern composers, has created a new set of texts for Dichterliebe, which breaks the cycle into four distinct sections of four songs each (Spring I-IV, Summer V-VIII, etc.). Kirschner has taken the "season of love" in the Heine poems and transformed them into a full year of desperation, elation, introspection and rejection. Soprano Jean Danton has performed widely on the opera, oratorio, musical theatre and concert stage, and has previously performed in the world premiere of Carson Cooman's Seducing Summer by the Sea, on a libretto by Elizabeth Kirschner.