Loris Tjeknavorian is an Iranian conductor and composer, of Armenian ancestry, that decided to wrote an opera based on the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings).
The title is Rostam and Sohrab, on the fate of one great Persian hero, Rostam, that kills in the battlefield his own son, Sohrab, while they are fighting for different kindgoms.
Willem Jeths, (Netherlands, 1959) is a composer that, after a career of more than twenty years with several recordings published, has never been able to get a big success outside Holland.
There he is also a teacher. In the year 2008 he premiered his opera Hotel de Pekin in Amsterdam, about the Empress Dowager Cixi, and later it was also staged in China.
The opera is perhaps a little bit too monotonous, with some Oriental flavour rather on the naive side.
Back in 2009 the opera Kuratov, by Russian composer Serge Noskov, was premiered.
Apparently it was the first opera ever with a libretto written in Komi language. The komi are living in the Northwest Ural range, and their language is spoken by some 500,000 people. Ivan Kuratov was a poet and linguist that was using Komi for his works in the 19th century.
For many years, we have been hearing the rumor that Pierre Boulez was preparing an opera for La Scala, based on En attendant Godot.
It's very unlikely that we will ever watch this opera, but at least we can hear the version written by composer Mark Alburger for his San Francisco Cabaret Opera:
did this last week. the Princeton One-act Opera Project 3 brand new one-acts at the McCarter Theater. mix of Princeton students and professionals.
Would have reviewed sooner but I was off in a mountain, isolated from internet.
1: Anthony Davis premiered his newest of many chamber operas. It was pretty cool. Nora Lear is a neuroscientist who comes down with dementia while struggling to cope with her three daughters. cool music that alternated between the language of a lot of contemporary chamber sound and the world of grounded reggae/jazz/showtuney. The music changed worlds quite seamlessly. One might read a description of the drama and think it sounds gimmicky. It really functions quite well, and does have dramatic quality, but it doesn't entirely transcend that assumption. a good drama though. Music was probably the coolest part (oh and some AWESOME use of electronics, recorded spoken dialogue from the stage and distorted it in great ways).
2: Princeton undergrad composer/librettist team, 10 minutes, about a woman struggling to find meaning in her fancy-pants racquet club existence (takes place on a tennis court). clearly milking the "i've totally been raised in a fancy racquet club 'cause i go to an ivy league school" thing. but it's a LOT better dramatically than i just made it sound. 6 strings around the stage, including some "action" from the violin players (i love that). I described it to a friend and he thought it sounded like "country-club Erwartung".
Frankly though, I can't give either of a specific 'grade', because i can't think about them, i can barely remember them. at the time they were awesome experiences (i felt money's-worth'd before the third) but after seeing number 3, forget about it...
3: "Weakness" by Barbara White. if my high school GPA was more than 3.2, I would pursue the idea of being a princeton student just to study with her.
old celtic folklore, the druidic mysticism of Ireland.
a goddess (heavy soprano) forms herself into a mortal (her dance doppelganger) to spend lovely time with a human man (another dancer). Her Goddess form narrates and dramatizes as a singer the story we see illustrated by the dancers (that description does not do justice to the way abstraction is layered, especially after about 2/3s in they start to contort the relationship between each layer) (BRILLIANTLY) (I also kinda watered down the mythological foundation, it's more interesting than that). She credited the inspiration with her scholar friend and his lectures on celtic druidic wisdom and lore. So anyway i got to have a conversation about mystical folklores with probably the top celtic myth-culture scholar in the world.
enough of that, so the music: a japanese flute called Shakazu (or something like that), the composer herself on clarinet/bass clarinet, electric guitar, and percussion. the percussion's extended technique developed into a dramatic context similar to that of a distorted electric guitar. ethereal, not too sparse, perfect music. Modern, but not betraying it's folk roots (a balance I would kill to find)
the dancing and the choreography was LITERALLY the most amazing thing I've ever tried to absorb in a language i do not understand. I am a little slow with my perception of dance, but just this experience got me a LOT better at reading that language.
back to the dramatic abstraction/abstract drama, it's not the most imaginative layering and placement of ideas such as a character being played by both dancer and singer, but it IS the most WELL IMPLEMENTED use I ever thought I would see.
A+ would see again.
...
Anyway, since this played only two nights both of which are now in the past I didn't think it was necessary for "theater performance reviews". But I would recommend any of the Mid-Atlantic region to keep an eye on Princeton for new music. I've seen quite a few of their composition department concerts, always worth it, usually free, and a very friendly atmosphere in the open-door receptions afterwards. The only thing better than seeing the Krux Quartet premiere new works for free, is having conversation with the guys in the Krux Quartet after seeing them premiere new works for free. But that gets more into "contemporary music" than "contemporary opera" by now.
Yes, Davis is an interesting fellow. Here below we can hear complete his opera Lilith:
Gerardo Gandini is an Argentinian pianist, composer and conductor, apart from teacher at the Buenos Aires Conservatory.
He has been also composer-in-residence for Teatro Colón, and the author of several operas.
One of those operas is La ciudad ausente, (The Absent City), written in 1995 with a libretto by the novelist (and also a Princeton's teacher) Ricardo Piglia, based on his own novel.
Bo Holten is a Danish conductor and composer that has been writing, among other things like soundtracks, a handful of operas. Let's hear a fragment from one of them, The Visit of the Royal Physician, based on P.O. Enquist's novel, premiered in 2009:
A floresta é jovem e cheia de vida (The Forest is Young and Full of Life) is an opera written by Luigi Nono in 1966, in relation with the Vietnam War and the decolonization process.
Although the 'political' views of Nono in this opera are inevitably dated, the musical content is still challenging. The piece is complete in youtube:
"A world of ancient gods rises up in all its power and glory, and some of its many characters are united in and speak through the main protagonist. He is both an independent modern individual and a representative of something eternally human."
This is how Danish composer Anders Nordentoft introduces his opera On this Planet (2002) for singing (non operatic) voice and sinfonietta. Again, this is piece on the border between opera and performance (and rather on the performance's side)
Albertine is a short theatrical piece for solo female voice and whispering male voices, based on Marcel Proust’s Albertine Disparue. Italian composer Lucia Ronchetti is very active on what she calls music theather arena, but we can, perhaps, give this kind of works the old-fashioned title of "opera":
Swedish composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl, wrote Aniara in 1959. This is one of the few science-fiction operas ever written, and as such the piece is not lacking in interest. The story of a condemned spaceship loaded with the remnants of the human race, and the music itself is not that memorable, though.
Do you know anything about the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner, Silent Night by Kevin Puts?
One of our interviewees - baritone Liam Bonner - was part of the world premiere and loved it; it's being given again in Philadelphia later this year and I might consider a trip up there.
"J'ai dit qu'il ne suffisait pas d'entendre la musique, mais qu'il fallait encore la voir" (Stravinsky)
I've heard about this opera, but I haven't listened to the music.
Buddy of mine is a student of Kevin Puts'. Said he got a sneak peek at a videotape, said it was "phenomenal."
I'll see you there, Alma.
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