George Herbert Fairclough News
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2024-04-23
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2022-07-11 18:13:00
The Blue Woman, Royal Opera, 6 July 2022
Image:Camilla Greenwell, ROHLinbury Studio TheatreWoman 1 – Elaine Mitchener Woman 2 – Lucy Schaufer Woman 3 – Gweneth Ann RandWoman 4 – Rosie MiddletonCellos – Louise McMonagle, Su-a Lee, Tamaki Sugimoto, Clare O’ConnellPercussionist – Angela Wai-Nok Hui Actor – Eve Ponsonby Voice-over Artist – Eleanor HendersonKatie Mitchell (director)Lizzie Clachan (designs)Emma Doherty (assistant director)James Farncombe (lighting)Grant Gee (video)Ellie Horne (dramaturgy)Matthew Fairclough (sound design)Jessica Cottis (music director)Jamie Man (conductor)What is opera? It may seem self-indulgent to begin by repeating, rehearsing, even reheating that question. It both matters and does not. The Tête a Tête Festival has surely shown London opera-goers that opera can be pretty much anything one wants it to be. And that, I think, is the point here. One may think The Blue Woman as much a theatre piece or even an installation as an opera, but does it matter? In some cases, it might—or at least might be interesting. This […]
2020-06-20 08:59:24
A work usually starts with a conversation: I chat to percussionist Joby Burgess about new repertoire, collaborating with composers and playing during lockdown
[…] concentrating on one instruments, he knows that each time he plays the concerto, the orchestra and the audience think 'what is he going to do with the bass drum', but you can do an awful lot with it. Joby's project, Powerplant has been a huge part of his musical development, including a sold out concert at the Southbank Centre. Powerplant brings percussion together with electronics and video. Over the years Kathy Hinde (artist), Matt Fairclough (electronics) and Joby have developed how to bring the three together. They have performed commissions from Gabriel Prokofiev and by Graham Fitkin, whose work used a Xylo-synth, a keyboard playing midi samples and in this case just the voices of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush. More recently they played a work by Max de Wardener based on a film by Michael Hanneke, The Piano Teacher, which used 'Am Dorf' from Schubert's Winterreise from the […]
2020-03-26 12:45:00
Interpreting Wagner's Dreams: Staging 'Parsifal' in the Twenty-first Century
[…] commentary suffers either from factual inaccuracy or wild conjecture, as well as the repetition of bizarrely outdated psychological tropes, such as the ‘responsibility’ of an ‘overbearing’ mother (Cosima) for a son’s homosexuality. [13] Tash Siddiqui reports ‘a kind of audible shudder, a repressed Mexican wave, surging through the Bayreuth audience at this point’ (personal communication). [14] Horace, ‘Satires,’ I, I, 69-70, in Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, tr. H Rushton Fairclough, revised edn (Harvard and London, 1929). [15] Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe; Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden, 1946). [16] (Additional note: I would see it in 2017. Reviews of all three performances may be found on this blog.) [17] ‘Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal’, After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from ‘Parsifal’ to Nono (Woodbridge, 2014), 210–33. [18] David J. Levin, ‘Reading a Staging/Staging a Reading’, Cambridge […]
2020-03-26 12:45:00
Interpreting Wagner's Dreams: Staging 'Parsifal' in the Twenty-first Century
[…] commentary suffers either from factual inaccuracy or wild conjecture, as well as the repetition of bizarrely outdated psychological tropes, such as the ‘responsibility’ of an ‘overbearing’ mother (Cosima) for a son’s homosexuality. [13] Tash Siddiqui reports ‘a kind of audible shudder, a repressed Mexican wave, surging through the Bayreuth audience at this point’ (personal communication). [14] Horace, ‘Satires,’ I, I, 69-70, in Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, tr. H Rushton Fairclough, revised edn (Harvard and London, 1929). [15] Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe; Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden, 1946). [16] (Additional note: I would see it in 2017. Reviews of all three performances may be found on this blog.) [17] ‘Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal’, After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from ‘Parsifal’ to Nono (Woodbridge, 2014), 210–33. [18] David J. Levin, ‘Reading a Staging/Staging a Reading’, Cambridge […]
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