World-class lutenist Paul O'Dette performs in Barnes Hall Nov. 3

Paul O'Dette, a lutenist who is regarded by many critics and concertgoers as the best in the world, will give a concert in Barnes Hall Wednesday, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public.

A reviewer in The Boston Globe wrote: "If O'Dette sang high notes the way he plays the lute, there would be Four Tenors, and he would be the best of them." And a music critic from Continuo described an O'Dette concert as follows: "Lucky audience: We heard what can't be done."

At Cornell, O'Dette will perform dances and fantasias from Renaissance Italy and Baroque Spain; lute music from the early 16th century by Dalza, Ripa and Milano; and guitar music from 18th-century Spain, Mexico and West Africa by Santiago de Murcia.

O'Dette has made more than 100 recordings, many of which have been nominated for Gramophone's Record-of-the-Year award. Recent releases include The Complete Lute Music of John Dowland (a five-CD set for Harmonia Mundi USA), which has been awarded the prestigious Diapason D'or de l'Annee; Jacaras: Spanish Baroque Guitar Music by Santiago de Murcia, named CD of the month in January 1999 by Stereophile Magazine; and Alla Venetiana: Virtuoso Lute Music from 16th-Century Venice, a Classic CD Choice for June. O'Dette has performed on radio and television broadcasts throughout Europe, Australia and North America and at every major international early music festival.

In 1997 O'Dette led performances of Luigi Rossi's L'Orfeo at Tanglewood, the Boston Early Music Festival and the Drottningholm Court Theatre in Sweden. This past summer he directed performances of Cavalli's Ercole Amante at the Boston Early Music Festival, Tanglewood, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival, and Provenzale's La Stellidaura Vendicata at the Vadstena Academy in Sweden.

O'Dette has served as director of early music at the Eastman School of Music since 1976 and is artistic director of the Boston Early Music Festival.

Also on the Cornell Department of Music's schedule is Mozart and Salieri, Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov's one-act chamber opera based the Alexander Pushkin's verse tragedy of the same name. The concert is tonight, Oct. 28, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall and is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored with Cornell's Department of Russian Studies as part of a worldwide celebration marking the bicentennial year of the birth of one of Russia's great writers. Prior to the performance, from 7:15 to 7:45 p.m., visiting Russian scholar Oleg Proskurin will discuss the Pushkin work.

A morality play with contemporary appeal, the Pushkin "little tragedy in verse" explores the heights and depths of the creative mind at work. The performance of the vest-pocket opera, less than an hour long, features a new English language translation and a restored piano score that better reflects both Rimsky-Korsakov's and Pushkin's original intentions.

Mozart is played by Michael Herren, distinguished research professor of classics and humanities at York University and a member of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. The director, Myra A. Malley, is a doctoral candidate at Toronto who teaches in York's theater department. The project was conceived and produced by Sterling Beckwith, a specialist in Russian music who earned his doctorate in musicology at Cornell in 1969 and is now a professor emeritus of music and humanities at York and senior associate of the Centre for Russian and East European studies at Toronto.