Media Opera/Opera’s Media: Elizabeth Kelly’s Losing Her Voice
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/oq/kbz023
ISSN1476-2870
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoLakeside Arts’ Djanogly Theatre, University of Nottingham Composer: Elizabeth Kelly Libretto: Elizabeth Kelly Premiered April 6 and 7, 2019 Production direction: Martin Berry Digital design: Barret Hodgson, Chris Greenhalgh, and Adrian Hazzard Set design: Francesca Lazell Costume design: Charlotte Dearman Lighting design: Christopher Flux Musical director/conductor: Calum Fraser Musicians/ensemble: Mervyn Cooke (piano), Matthew Walker (clarinet), Matthew Herbert (percussion), James Dickinson (violin), Daniel Boucher (violin), Carmen Flores (viola), Kristen Horner (cello) Cast: Susanna Fairbairn (Geraldine Farrar), Marie Vassiliou (Lilli Lehmann), Jeremy Huw Williams (Cecil B. DeMille/ Journalist), Andrew Henley (Crown Prince of Germany/ Lou Tellegen/ Journalist), Chorus At the opening of Losing Her Voice, Bizet’s Carmen is radically reframed in a musical kaleidoscope. Elizabeth Kelly’s new opera begins with the dramatic, brash chordal gestures and shimmering scalic figures typical of silent-era film soundtracks. Intertitles on three screens across the stage set the scene: we are in 1880, the founding of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City. The company is struggling to make ends meet; the new music director, Leopold Damrosch—hired to reverse the theater’s dwindling fortunes—decides that the best way forward (no doubt with vested interest) is to focus on opera in German rather than the usual Italian fare. Enter our first leading character: the famous German Wagnerian soprano Lilli Lehmann, singing Carmen’s “Habañera” in German on the stage of the Met. Bizet’s melody is quickly distorted and fragmented, the words unravel and morph into a commentary on what is unfolding—a postmodern collapse and disintegration. We are simultaneously in the sound world of Carmen, in turn-of-the century New York, and in 2019. The sense of musical palimpsest reverberates across what follows.
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