MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Staatsoper Hamburg is presenting the world premiere production of Salvatore Sciarrino‘s 15th opera, Venere e Adone, 28 May-8 June.

Drawn from Ovid’s retelling of the myth of Venus and Adonis in Metamorphoses and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Sciarrino’s new opera is a meditation on love and death. The cast features American countertenor Randall Scotting in the role of Adonis, who is pursued by Venus, the goddess of love, sung by soprano Layla Claire.  Staatsoper Hamburg’s General Music Director, Kent Nagano, conducts and Georges Delnon directs.

“Adonis is probably the liveliest character in the whole opera,” says Scotting. “He is youthful, boisterous, and concerned only with hunting and making love. The music Sciarrino composed for him really embodies these qualities, especially in his big hunting scene. There are aspects of the opera everyone will recognize, but it also feels new and relevant today.”

an atmospheric and inventive opera that often surrounds the audience in the nuanced sounds of the natural world.  Mimicking the cycle of life and death, sounds arise from nothing and just as quickly disappear, leaving the listener engaged, interested, and waiting on the edge of their seats for the next surprise.  ‘Adonis is probably the liveliest character in the whole opera.  He is youthful, boisterous, and concerned only with hunting and making love.  The music Sciarrino composed for him really embodies these qualities, especially in his big hunting scene.  There are aspects of the opera everyone will recognize, but it also feels new and relevant today,’ said Scotting of his role in the opera.

From the Staatsoper Hamburg site:

“Sounds from the silence. They come closer, move and dissolve into darkness. Their nature is being and non-being, coming into being and passing away – the same as all living beings in the eternal illusion of life and death. They are sounds as they surround people, a music close to nature. They tell of mythical figures: Venus and Mars, who once begat Cupid. Cupid, who is now to avenge his betrayed father. The beautiful Adonis, whose love for Venus is his undoing. And above all: the monster who knows no affection, no love, no hate, least of all himself. It waits, unknown and deadly, maltreated by the voices of the world. An ancient story winds through the thicket of mythological entanglements and finds new paths. Who will triumph, love or death?”

Filed under: music news, new opera

Black Lodge is the first full-length feature film by the influential opera producer Beth Morrison Projects. and features music by Grammy-nominated David T. Little, with a libretto by legendary Beat poet Anne Waldman. Drawing on the disturbing and complicated mythologies of the surrealist writer William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Black Lodge uses dance, industrial rock, classical string quartet, and opera to take viewers through a Lynchian psychological escape room. Starring Timur and dancer Jennifer Harrison Newman, Black Lodge is now available for streaming on the Opera Philadelphia Channel.

Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer (Timur) faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront the darkest moment in his life, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. A woman (Jennifer Harrison Newman) is at the center of all the writer’s afterlife encounters. She is the subject of his life’s greatest regret, and she materializes everywhere in this Otherworld. The writer cannot detach any thoughts of his life from her. 

The groundbreaking Beth Morrison Projects developed and produced Black Lodge over the past ten years. Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.”

The project is attracting attention throughout the music industry. Renowned musician Thurston Moore, known as a member of Sonic Youth, serves as executive producer of Black Lodge. “This is opera ripping through the fabric of future vision psychosis where the integrity of classic form clasps the hands of radical possibilities,” said Moore. “David T. Little takes no prisoners here, in confluence with poet angel head Anne Waldman’s libretto of nature, irreality, and spirit consciousness, divining deliverance from life’s spectacle of chaos and love. You’re about to have your mind scorched, my friends!”

Composer Philip Glass (Akhnaten, Einstein on the Beach) is also a fan.  “Black Lodge is a bold new operatic film,” said Glass. “It seamlessly blends poetry and music into a powerful cinematic experience.”

Filed under: music news, new opera