Tag Archives: opera

Wagner’s Parsifal

You may be interested in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Wagner’s Parsifal which will be showing live in select cinemas across the US tomorrow, Saturday March 2nd. Directed by Daniele Gatti, with Jonas Kaufmann, Katarina Dalayman, Peter mattei, Evgeny Nikitin, René Pape. Run time is 345 minutes (almost 6 hours!).

Metropolitan Opera's production of Wagner's Parsifal

“Wagner’s Parsifal — New Production
Saturday, March 2, 2013 (12:00PM ET / 9:00AM PT)
Expected Running Time: 5 hours 45 minutes

Request your free Met: Live in HD Radio Guide – learn more

Experience the seventh season of the Metropolitan Opera’s Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series The Met: Live in HD in movie theaters nationwide. The broadcast of Wagner’s Parsifal will be presented live for only one day on Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET / 9:00 AM PT in select movie theaters.

Jonas Kaufmann stars in the title role of the innocent who finds wisdom in François Girard’s new vision for Wagner’s final masterpiece. His fellow Wagnerian luminaries include Katarina Dalayman as the mysterious Kundry, Peter Mattei as the ailing Amfortas, Evgeny Nikitin as the wicked Klingsor, and René Pape as the noble knight Gurnemanz. Daniele Gatti conducts.

An encore presentation of this performance will be exhibited in select movie theaters on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 6:30 PM in all time zones.

Casting subject to change.
Running time is approximate.” [via]

Götterdämmerung

 

Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, part 3 of the Ring of the Neibelungen cycle, conducted by Zubin Metha, at Reina Sofia, Velencia, Italy

Dr Dee is a newly released album of music for Dr Dee: An English Opera

Dr Dee is a newly released album of music by Damon Albarn for Dr Dee: An English Opera and is reviewed at “Damon Albarn: Dr Dee – review“. I posted about Dr Dee: An English Opera last year at “Dr Dee: An English Opera on July 1st-9th at Palace Theatre, Manchester UK” but missed that the music had been released. Anyhow, Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn both get hat tips.

“Any casual fans wondering what that Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn has been up to since the graphic outfit split last year will probably not find this album the most germane of listens. When you stick the Dr Dee CD into your computer, iTunes laughably categorises it as indie rock. It really isn’t.

First staged at Manchester’s international festival last year, Dr Dee is an operatic work that revisits John Dee, a renaissance man of the Elizabethan era. His expertise in mathematics and astronomy earned him the ear of Elizabeth I, but his thirst for occult knowledge led to his downfall. A more evolved version of the opera is due this summer, as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

This is also Albarn’s first solo album proper (not counting the demo collection, Democrazy, from 2003), and Dr Dee finds the occasional Blur singer at his most heterogeneous: refracting folk and early church music through the African influences he has been steeped in since 2002’s Mali Music. The album opens with running water, Devonian birdsong and an organ-heavy track called ‘The Golden Dawn’, a reference to the magickal society probably best known to rock fans as the playground of Aleister Crowley.” [via]

What’s Wrong with the Movies? by Aleister Crowley in Vanity Fair, Jul 1917.

“MODERN opera is suffering in the same way. The only pains taken at the Metropolitan, let us say, is with the hiring of the singers; but they are not stunned, carried out themselves by the glory of witnessing a really artistic operatic creation. There is everywhere evident this same blind fatuity in the movies.” [via]

Paul Barnes plays Akhnaten by Philip Glass

 

“According to the composer, this work is the culmination of his two other biographical operas, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (about Mohandas Gandhi). These three people — Akhenaten, Einstein and Gandhi — were all driven by an inner vision which altered the age in which they lived, in particular Akhenaten in religion, Einstein in science, and Gandhi in politics.

The text, taken from original sources, is sung in the original languages, linked together with the commentary of a narrator in a modern language, such as English or German. Egyptian texts of the period are taken from a poem of Akhenaten himself, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and from extracts of decrees and letters from the Amarna period, the seventeen-year period of Akhenaten’s rule. Other portions are in Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew. Akhnaten’s Hymn to the Sun is sung in the language of the audience.” [via]

 

“Open are the double doors of the horizon
Unlocked are its bolts
Clouds darken the sky
The stars rain down
The constellations stagger
The bones of the hell hounds tremble
The porters are silent
When they see this king
Dawning as a soul” [see]

 

Statue of Pharaoh Akhenaten

Dr Dee: An English Opera on July 1st-9th at Palace Theatre, Manchester UK

I’m pretty sure I posted about this opera to the Fb feed a while back, mainly due to the fact that Alan Moore had been involved (before dropping out) and there was some of Moore’s script available online; but, here I find that the show has actually opened.

So, Dr Dee: An English Opera [via] is at Palace Theatre, Manchester UK through July 9th.

You may also be interested in Alan Moore working with Mike Patton, and with the Gorillaz on opera about John Dee, Alan Moore is not writing an opera with Gorillaz. Boo!, Damon Albarn Is Going Ahead with the John Dee Opera Without Alan Moore, and and the full text of Alan Moore’s unfinished John Dee opera is available in Strange Attractor Journal Four.