Operas in Concert: 19th-Century Great Wars, Colonial Sorrows
Tarik O’Regan/Tom Phillips, after the novella by Joseph Conrad
In Joseph Conrad’s novella, the dying ivory trader Kurtz becomes a focal point for the injustices and suffering imposed on the Congolese people, all in the name of conquest and trade. As The Guardian observes, “the brilliance of Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips’ new chamber opera lies in its ability to convey all that horror without the compulsion to show it — the ultimate psychodrama — and to employ music of startling beauty to tell such a brutal tale.” That beauty lies in O’Regan’s “continuously shifting musical tapestry filled with many gorgeous effects” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and moreover in striking moments of ensemble singing, where his significant chops as a choral composer are on full display.
Soloists: Isaiah Bell (Marlow), Daniel Cilli (Thames Captain), Philip Skinner (Kurtz)
excerpt, Opera Parallele
Donnacha Dennehy/Asenath Nicholson, anon., and interviews with Chomsky, Krugman, Murphy, Milanovic, and Vaughan
Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s “docu-cantata” The Hunger tells the story of the Great Famine, an event that has reverberated through Ireland’s history as thousands died and millions more emigrated from 1845-1852. Scored for soprano and a sean-nós (Irish “old style”) singer, The Hunger documents this suffering through the eyes of American iconoclast Asenath Nicholson, who traveled to Ireland to bear witness and attempt to aid the Irish people. Colonial Britain’s cruelty towards the Irish people during the fame underpins an audacious libretto, which draws upon a number of added historical sources. Gramophone calls the piece “a haunting, illuminating, harrowing, yet subtly gripping work,” with particularly captivating duet moments between Nicholson and the dying man played by the sean-nos singer.
The Hunger is available in both concert and stage versions.
Soloists: Katherine Manley (Asenath Nicholson) Iarla Ó Lionáird (Old Man)
'Black Potatoes,' Iarla Ó Lionáird with Alarm Will Sound led by Alan Pierson
Mariinsky Theatre
Sergei Prokofiev/Sergei Prokofiev and Mira Mendelson
Tolstoy wrote of his towering War and Peace that it is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” In Prokofiev’s hands, this sprawling tale set during the Napoleonic Wars becomes an immense, rich, and dramatic opera. Prokofiev’s composition of the work was hindered by Soviet censorship, including an ordered revision of the second half that cast General Kutuzov as a heroic stand-in for Stalin. However, like so much art made under dictatorial regimes, other readings are hidden beneath the surface of Prokofiev’s work, and recent productions have pulled these to the fore. Following the Bavarian State Opera’s acclaimed 2023 production, The New York Times argues that “The Time for Prokofiev’s ‘War and Peace’ Is Now: After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this opera adaptation of Tolstoy seemed unperformable. But in Munich, it has become an urgent antiwar cry.”
Soloists: Olga Kulchynska (Natasha), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Andrei), Bekhzod Davronov (Anatole), Dmitry Ulyanov (Kutuzov), Alexandra Yangel (Sonya)
excerpt, Mariinsky Theatre
Art’s Afterlives | Feminist Essays | Casting Off Chains: Abolition and the Civil War | The Americas: Latine Culture and History | East Asian Love Stories | Positively Medieval: Stories of the Middle Ages and Renaissance | Classics of English Fiction | The 19th Century: Great Wars and Colonial Sorrows | Upheavals of the 20th Century | The Weight of Motherhood