One of the weirder operas I’ve experienced

The Bauhaus is usually associated with architecture and industrial design but it also had a musical side. The musical archive is mostly unexplored but there’s now a project to publish and record as much as possible. The first recording to be released is Marc Blitzstein’s 1929 opera Parabola and Circula to an English libretto by George Whitsett. What’s really unusual is that all the characters are geometric shapes (or maybe concepts, since a point and a line don’t have “shape). These characters interact on a series of planes. It makes me curious to know whether composer or librettist were familiar with Edin Abbott’s Flatland though the opera is about love and philosophy rather than geometry and class (*).

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reGENERATION week 1

There were three reGENERATION concerts in Walter Hall yesterday at 1pm, 4pm and 7.30pm.  It made for a long but interesting day.  As last year, each concert was a mix of vocal and chamber music.  The vocal program was not announced in advance so I’m working from notes and there could be the odd error.  Pleasingly, there were surtitles for the songs.  This is a huge improvement on a sheet of tiny print to be read in the dark! Continue reading →