Jean-Michel Malouf News
Last update
2024-03-29
Refresh
2018-12-10 07:34:11
Winter Fragments: Chamber music by Michael Berkeley
[…] a quietly intrigued response from the quartet before a spiky dialogue develops which includes a rather popular sounding tune. The opening material returns at the end, leading to a dark epilogue. This is striking and rather serious piece, one long movement of nearly 15 minutes duration.By contrast, Winter Fragments from 1996 is a series of seven short songs for mezzo-soprano and ensemble setting words ranging from Berkeley's own to Shakespeare, James Thomson, Longfellow and David Malouf, the prevailing mood being melancholy thoughts of Winter. Whilst there are lively and dramatic moments, there is a sense of seriousness and intensity to the piece often with rather spare scoring. Berkeley's music is broadly tonal whilst not eschewing complexity and the writing for the voice is rather instrumental with jagged lines.Sonnet for Orpheus is from Berkeley's 2010 Three Rilke Sonnets which sets a Rilke sonnet from Part one, No. II, from Rilke's Sonnets […]
2016-12-11 22:00:00
Kaija Saariaho L'amour de loin Met
[…] Saariaho's dreamy water colour harmonies just didn't work. Another Saariaho/Maalouf collaboration, Le passion de Simone (2006) was more effective. That was based on the writings of Simone Weil, and thus took a form closer to oratorio than to opera. The orchestral writing was more austere (Simone starved herself to death), relatively little singing and a prominent part for spoken narrator. I didn't go to Emilie (2010) also Saariaho/Malouf. That was a one person vehicle for Karita Mattila, but caught the broadcast with Camilla Nylund. My review of L'amour de loin at the English National Opera, with Roderick Williams in 2009 is HERE. Saariaho’s writing works best describing images like the ocean crossing, one of the most brilliant scenes in this production where light images are projected onto waving expanses of silk. It’s less suited to dramatic rationale. Jaufré […]
Norman Lebrecht - Slipped disc
2016-07-11 17:38:46
It’s Jane Eyre, the opera (again)
A Charlotte Bronte opera that occupied twenty years of composer John Joubert’s life until its completion in 1997 is to receive its world premiere on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre in Birmingham. Joubert will turn 90 next year. A previous Jane Eyre opera by Michael Berkeley and David Malouf was stolen from the composer’s car in 2000. He rewrote it with lighter instrumentation. press release: From its first publication in 1847, Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre has inspired innumerable theatrical interpretations for both stage and screen. To mark the 200th anniversary of Brontë’s birth in 2016, and in anticipation of British composer John Joubert’s 90th birthday in 2017, Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra will premiere Joubert’s opera based on Brontë’s first and most popular novel.Jane Eyre will receive its world premiere in a concert performance on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing […]
2015-12-03 01:01:14
Not all Australian opera is frilly, federally funded fare. Pinchgut airs a forgotten masterpiece of fun – L’amant jaloux – with a young cast in the finest of voiceClassical music isn’t a secret society unless we allow it to beWhile Australia’s national opera company feeds its audiences with bottom-line friendly re-runs of Romantic favourites, two minuscule opera companies in Sydney are spanning the extremities of the repertoire to offer more interesting fare.Sydney Chamber Opera, founded in 2010 by Jack Symonds and Louis Garrick and now based at Carriageworks, produced two challenging works this year: the premiere in May of composer Eliott Gyger’s Fly Away Peter, an adaption of David Malouf’s dreamily powerful wartime novella; Italian composer Fausto Romitelli’s 2003 work, An Index of Metals, provocatively staged in November. Continue reading...
or
- timeline: Conductors.
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): M...