Mainly Mozart Festival focuses on a period of personal struggle for the genius composer

Martina Schimitschek, San Diego Union-Tribune, 27th May 2017

When Laura Morefield, daughter of San Diego poet and theater critic Charlene Baldridge, was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer, she wrote poetry reflecting on the tumultuous journey of her battle with the disease. After her death in 2011, composer and family friend Jake Heggie set one of those pieces to music.

Titled “The Work at Hand,” it will be part of a chamber music performance that begins this year’s Mainly Mozart Festival on Friday.

“She was angry, angry, angry about what happened to her, but in this poem she makes peace,” Baldridge said. “Jake captured all of her anger, all of her frustration and all of her love. It’s just magnificent.”

It also captures the essence of this year’s festival theme, “Beauty Through Adversity: Finding One’s Voice.”

“This is an exact example of beauty through adversity, because she took, at the end of her life, the agony of dying and put it into the most beautiful, uplifting and honest poetry,” said Michael Francis, the festival’s music director. “That is a real example of how the stage of one’s life allows us to see things in a different way.”

The festival, which runs through June 25, will examine a frustrating time in Mozart’s life from his late teens to early 20s. This is the second year of the festival’s ambitious six-year chronological look at Mozart’s life.