Saint-Saëns Déjanire, of 1911, was his last opera. The plot is basically the same as Handel’s Hercules. Déjanire is infuriated by Hercule’s infatuation with Iole so he gives him a poisoned robe; itself a gift from the Centaur Charon, which kills him. There are a few plot tweaks. Iole is in love with Philoctète and agrees to marry Hercule to save his life. But, basically classic, simple plot.
Musically it’s tonal and elegant. It was well received by the critics who, correctly, pointed out that it looked backwards to Gluck and Spontini and owed little or nothing to Wagner. Premiering when it did; Petrouchka was playing in Paris and it was two years after the premier of Strauss’ Elektra, it seemed to belong to an earlier period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the wake, a few years later, of events louder, more dramatic and more dissonant than any musical composition it rather disappeared from the repertoire. Continue reading
The Toronto Symphony’s 2024/25 season is the usual mix of mainstream symphony/concerto rep, Pops, film music, kids’ concerts etc. My sense is that it has got more “popular” since the pandemic and that therefore there’s been less that’s caught my eye. That’s my story anyway!
Saturday evening, at Redeemer Lutheran, the Happenstancers offered up a palindromic tribute to Pascal Dusapin. As it was a palindrome I shall review it from the middle outwards. Let us take the interval as t=0. Then at t=+/-1 we heard Two Walkings from singers Danika Lorèn and Hilary Jean Young. Two songs; “How Many Little Wings” and “Kiss My Lips She Did” came before the break and the rest; “May June”, “A Scene in Singing” and “It Seems To Be Turning Music” after. And, of course the singers swapped positions at the break! This is extremely interesting but fiendishly difficult music with the unaccompanied singers trading snatches of phrases and half thoughts in a complex atonal musical language. I’m actually in awe that anybody can actually perform a work like this but they did, and very well.
operaramblings 