Search Results for "Sappho"
Peggy Glanville-Hicks: Sappho
Sappho, the last grand opera of Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-90), was written in her stone cottage on Mykonos in 1963. Never heard before this recording, Sappho reflects Glanville-Hicks' fascination with the orient and folk music, encapturing the colours of ancient Greece, with a heroic brass fanfare and epic writing for chorus, haunting woodwind solos and shimmering percussion evoking the stillness of crystal island waters. Deborah Polaski, who creates the role of the disenchanted Sappho, describes it as 'the kind of music that singers want to sing'. The libretto, based on Lawrence Durrell's verse-play, incorporates fragments of Sappho's own verse.
Deborah Polaski, soprano: Sappho
Martin Homrich, tenor: Phaon
Scott MacAllister, tenor: Pittakos
Roman Trekel, baritone: Diomedes
Wolfgang Koch, bass-baritone: Minos
Sir John Tomlinson, bass: Kreon
Jacquelyn Wagner, soprano: Chloe/Priestess
Bettina Jensen, soprano: Joy
Maria Markina, mezzo soprano: Doris
Laurence Meikle, baritone Alexandrian
Coro Gulbenkian, choir
Orquestra Gulbenkian, orchestra
Jennifer Condon, conductor
Double Disc!
Richard Flury: A Florentine Tragedy: Opera in One Act
The Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967) felt the fascination for A Florentine Tragedy, Oscar Wilde’s drama of love and violence in Renaissance Italy, that also attracted his near-contemporary Alexander Zemlinsky: they set the same libretto. Flury responded to the text with this dark and swirling one-act verismo opera, sizzling with sexual tension, the vocal lines of the three characters unfolding over an orchestral texture remarkable for its plasticity and kaleidoscopic colour. It is preceded here by a dignified but impassioned operatic scena setting Grillparzer’s dramatic treatment of the suicide of the Greek poetess Sappho.
Julia Sophie Wagner (soprano), Tracks 1-3, 5-11
Long Long (tenor), Tracks 2-11
Daniel Ochoa (baritone), Tracks 2-11
Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra
Paul Mann (conductor)
Where are the Women Composers?
Women Composers Bundle Time for a little controversy on this blog – but that’s not my aim, which is to try to understand why, when…