Arnold Schoenberg’s "Pierrot lunaire" is one of the seminal works of musical modernism, a work as challenging as it is gripping, a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria in twenty-one brief, gemlike movements. Written for chamber ensemble and reciter, whose vocalizations are poised between speech and song, "Pierrot lunaire" leads us through the “moonstruck” fantasies of the title character, that clown-like figure from the commedia dell’arte tradition. By turns comic, grotesque, disturbing, and nostalgic, Albert Giraud’s poetry (originally in French) inspired some of Schoenberg’s most colorful and inventive music.

A live performance of "Pierrot lunaire" is rare, but the performances on October 28 and 29, 2022, at 7:30 p.m., in the Diane Bennack Concert Hall at the University of the Incarnate Word will be even more special, because they will be staged, with Germany-based American soprano Christie Finn embodying the role of Pierrot as imagined by costume designer Margaret Mitchell and set designer / stage director Liz Fisher. A set of newly composed preludes, written by an international cadre of composers and inspired by Schoenberg’s masterwork, will precede the performances of "Pierrot lunaire." Supported by the Bennack Music Fund, Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts, Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, and UIW’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.