Lake Forest Civic Orchestra’s ‘Immigrant Stories’ includes opera found in Oak Park home

It’s not every day an 80-year-old opera is discovered in a dusty box stashed in an Oak Park basement.

An orchestral suite from that long-lost opera will be one of the three featured pieces in Lake Forest Civic Orchestra’s “Immigrant Stories” concert taking place at 4 p.m. March 13 at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest.

“Every composer on the program immigrated to the U.S. at some point,” explained Music Director Christopher Ramaekers. “However, each piece retains the character of the music from their homeland.”

Those homelands include Russia, Columbia and the Czech Republic.

“The concert opens with the first movement of (Sergei) Rachamninoff’s ‘Second Piano Concerto,’ a quintessentially romantic and very Russian piece,” Ramaekers said.

Guest pianist Eva Sharman, a senior at Lake Forest High School, will be tackling the first movement of the concerto along with the orchestra. The concerto — which premiered in 1901 with the composer as the soloist — packs plenty of Russian flair.

“That contrasts the next piece, ‘Concert Suite from Andina’ by Columbian composer Eustasio Rosales,” said Ramaekers, who arranged the suite, which is a set of three orchestral pieces excerpted from Rosales’s lost opera “Andina.” “Rosales wrote the piece in the 1930s but was unable to get the piece premiered.”

Rosales died on Christmas morning 1934. His music almost died with him.

“The opera was packed into a box and put into a basement in Oak Park,” Ramaekers said. “The opera sat in that box for 80 years until his great-grandson, a documentary filmmaker, took on the project of premiering this piece.”

It was not an easy undertaking for Arlen Parsa, Rosales’s great-grandson, who knew next to nothing about opera. But “Andina” had its world premiere in 2015 with a concert-style performance featuring the Chicago Composers Orchestra conducted by Ramaekers at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago.

Parsa detailed the journey from basement to stage in his 2017 documentary “The Way to Andina.” He will be on hand for a preconcert discussion.

Despite his long-lost opera, Rosales’s is often referred to as “Chicago’s first Hispanic composer.” His “Three Spanish Dances” had its world premiere by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1932.

“Rosales’s work retains the character of his native Columbia, but with romantic opera influence, reminiscent of Puccini,” Ramaekers said.

The concert closes with Antonín Dvorák’s “Symphony No. 6,” penned in 1880.

“This piece was written before he immigrated to the U.S., so this pastoral work is reminiscent of Czech folk and dance music in a symphonic form,” Ramaekers said.

From their own corners of the world, Rachamninoff immigrated to America in 1918, Rosales in 1900 and Dvorák in 1892.

“I hope the audience walks away with a sense of just how many divergent cultural influences have shaped our American musical styles,” Ramaekers said.

Lake Forest Civic Orchestra’s “Immigrant Stories” Concert

When: 4 p.m. March 13

Where: Gorton Community Center, 400 E. Illinois Road, Lake Forest

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Tickets: $10-$20

Information: lakeforestcivicorchestra.org

Jen Banowetz is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.