Tenor Donald George and pianist Lucy Mauro of Radford University, will present a guest artist recital titledThe Old Wicked Songs of Heinrich Heineat the West Virginia University Creative Arts Center, Monday, Oct. 8.

The program, which features narration by music faculty member Janis-Rozena Peri and electronic imagery by Ted McCosky, Jr., begins at 8:15 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (Room 200A). It is free and open to the public.

The Old Wicked Songsfeatures all texts of Heinrich Heine, one of the greatest German lyric poets. The 245 poems in hisBuch der Lieder(Book of Songs) collected in 1827, have been set to music nearly 5,000 times.

All the songs included in the recital are about relationships and the concert includes projected images of some of the more famous or important women who were part of Heines life, professionally, platonically or otherwise.

The first half includes music by Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Robert Franz, Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Ives and Hugo Wolf, among others. The second half isDie Dichterliebe(Poets Love), composed by Robert Schumann in 1840, and considered the masterpiece of the song cycle.

George is assistant professor of voice at Radford University. He studied at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and then studied voice in Germany with Margaretha von Winterfeldt (the teacher of Wunderlich) and Josef Metternich. He has sung at the Opera Bastille, La Scala, Chatelet, Opera Capitole Toulouse, Staatsoper in Vienna, Berlin and Hamburg, the Kennedy Center and the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

His large collection of CD recordings includes the VerdiRequiemunder A. Rahbari,Eliasunder K. Masur and alsoDie Schne Mllerinsong cycle. He has sungCandidewith Leonard Bernstein conducting. He travels extensively, recently singing in Shenyang, China, and giving master classes at the Music Conservatory there. This past summer also found him singing at various European festivals.

Mauro is assistant professor of music and director of accompanying at Radford University. She is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, from which she received bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees.

Recent performances include concerts at the Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium, Washington, D.C.; the Embassy of Poland in Washington, D.C.; Washington and Lee University; Virginia Tech University; the Whitaker Center; and, ArtsFest, among others.