To: "VOCALIST" <vocalist>
Subject: Pet/Animal Friend Recital Theme
Date sent: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 22:35:13 -0500
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Dear friends,

I've just been asked to put together a recital evening of music celebrating pets -- it'll be a fund-raiser for a wonderful animal shelter. (I am a mezzo-contralto.)

Can you List-ers help me find some neat literature? I already figure I will ask a fellow singer to join me for the delightful Rossini "Cat Duet", and then of course I'll sing Paisiello's "Nina" -- which, according to the apocryphal story, he wrote when his own kitty, named Nina, died and he
missed her so much he begged every instrument in the orchestra to wake her up. (I realize that modern scholarship suggests that "Nina" might be neither Paisiello's composition nor written in memory of his cat, but theme recitals thrive on apocryphal stories, so don't ruin my day!) And of course
one of my groups will be Ravel's wonderful "Histoires naturelles."

;-) Does anybody know of some other fine music involving a low/medium female voice that deals with the loving relationship between animals and their humans? In particular, I seem to remember an American song called "On the Death of a Kitten" that starts with the text: "Put the rubber mouse
away, pick the spools up from the floor; what was elegant and gay will not want them any more." Or something like that.

Anyhow, please let me know if you know of music that celebrates pets/companion animals, even if the connection is kinda tenuous (viz. my reference to Paisiello's "Nina") --

thanx,
Marion