Mask of Orpheus (Complete)
On this CD:
1. The Mask of Orpheus, opera
Composed by Sir Harrison Birtwistle
Performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra
with Marie Angel, BBC Singers, Peter Bronder, Omar Ebrahim, Jon Garrison, Alan Opie, Anne-Marie Owens
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
This imposing score, from British composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, mixes electronic effects with traditional instruments and voices in a retelling of the Orpheus and Euridice legend. Birtwistle achieves greater dramatic breadth than the Monteverdi and Gluck versions--but it is highly splintered storytelling. Up to three different singers play a single character in a fearsomely complex libretto by Peter Zinovieff, printed here with eye-crossing diagrams of the opera's structure. Onstage, the piece may communicate on some intuitive level like Einstein on the Beach, but when heard and not seen, Orpheus can be as bewildering as blueprints to a hydrogen bomb. The music is unusually expansive for Birtwistle with long-breathed electronic bass lines. Momentous plot turns have an almost Wagnerian monumentality. But much else sounds like obscure noodling, and there's little theatrical heat, demanding far more of its listeners than it gives. --David Patrick Stearns
Mask of Orpheus (Complete), Music, Birtwistle, Davis BBC So, Classical, Classical Composers, Opera / Operetta / Oratorio
Music Review:
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