Christmas comes to Frascati The gift of music illuminates the city.

A celebration for Marylene Mouquet’s daughter Patrizia who died in a tragic road accident 20 years ago on the 10th December.

A concert in which Mara Gualandris tells the tragic Victorian tale of Enoch Arden. Richard Strauss providing the very important score for piano which was played by Valerio Premuroso. I had met Valerio in 2008 when he was the Deus ex machina of the Rina Sala Gallo International piano competition in Monza and have not seen him since.

A road accident has left him semi invalid but it certainly did not stop him from playing the very difficult piano part with mastery and poetic understanding. Still able to pedal but only with the left foot he was able to create marvels of kaleidoscopic sounds following very closely the story that was unfolding as Mara told the harrowing story of Enoch and Annie.I have had the privilege to play this work with my late wife,Ileana Ghione, all over Italy and could appreciate the hold this work has on audiences of all ages. I remember a young girl being comforted by my wife after a performance we had given in Lucca. Bruno Cagli had translated the text into Italian as only a superb musician could possibly hope to do. We only made one addition to his version and that was to make sure that the last words that were uttered were indeed Enoch Arden. Bruno was thrilled with this addition that made a very moving close to this ,the most successful of melologues or musical declamations.After my wife’s death Milena Vukotic performed the work in many cities in celebration of the only actress that has ever opened and managed her own theatre for over thirty years.Mara Gualandris recited this. moving tale with clarity and simplicity allowing the harrowing tale to unwind without any rhetorical exaggerations.Valerio too listening so carefully and adding music where words were just not enough.

Today Frascati was in festive mood as Christmas approaches and what better way could there be for a mother to celebrate a daughter than with superb music making?

Enoch Arden is a narrative poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson , published in 1864 during his tenure as British poet laureate The story on which it was based was provided to Tennyson by Thomas Woolner.The poem lends its name to a principle in law that after being missing for a certain number of years (typically seven) a person may be declared dead for purposes of remarriage and inheritance of their survivors.

Fisherman-turned-merchant sailor Enoch Arden leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, having lost his job due to an accident; reflective of a masculine mindset common in that era, Enoch sacrifices his comfort and the companionship of his family in order to better support them. During the voyage, Enoch is shipwrecked on a desert island with two companions who eventually die. (This part of the story is reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe.)Enoch remains lost for eleven and half years. Ten years after Enoch’s disappearance, Phillip Ray asks Annie Arden to marry him, stating that it is obvious Enoch is dead. It was not unusual for 18th-century merchant ships to remain at sea for months or years, but there was always news of a ship’s whereabouts by way of other ships that had communicated with it. Phillip reminds Annie that there has been no word of Enoch’s ship. Annie asks Phillip to agree to wait a year. A year passes, and Phillip proposes to Annie again. She puts him off for another half-year. Annie reads her Bible and asks for a sign as to whether Enoch is dead or alive. She dreams of Enoch being on a desert island which she misinterprets as heaven. She marries Phillip and they have a child.

Enoch finds upon his return from the sea that his wife is married happily to his childhood friend and rival and has a child by him. Enoch’s life remains unfulfilled, with one of his own children now dead and his wife and remaining children now being cared for by another man.

Enoch never reveals to his wife and children that he is really alive, as he loves her too much to spoil her new happiness. Enoch dies of a broken heart.

The use of the name Enoch for a man who disappears from the lives of his loved ones is surely inspired by the biblical character Enoch. In fact, also the entire chronological structure of the protagonist’s life with its cycles related to the biblical symbolism of the “days of Creation” binds to the name of Enoch, as demonstrated by the analysis of an Italian thinker long interested in this work,and denotes Tennyson’s ability to insert theological intentions into simple elegiac mode with an unprecedented complexity in English literature.

In 1897, Richard Strauss  set the poem as a recitation for speaker and piano , published as his Op. 38. On 24 May 1962, Colombis Records a recording of Enoch Arden (recorded 2–4 October 1961) with Glenn Gould  on the piano and Claude Rains  as the speaker. The LP was made at a cost of $1500, and only 2000 copies were released. It remains a collector’s item.In 2010, Chad Bowles and David Ripley released a CD, and in 2020 a recording was made in German by pianist Kirill Gerstein and Swiss actor Bruno Ganx Conductor Emil de Cou arranged a version for chamber orchestra and narrator. This was performed with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and actor Gary Sloan in 2010.The British actor Christopher Kent and pianist Gamal Khamis performed a semi-staged livestream performance during the 2020 lockdown and subsequently recorded a critically acclaimed CD for SOMM Recordings, which was released in 2022.

The poem is also the basis of the opera of the same name  by composer Ottmar Gerster and librettist Karl von Levetzow, which had its premiere in Dusseldorf on 15 November 1936.