"Britten wrote these songs during his three-year stay in America with Peter Pears, the tenor who was his partner and muse. But they were premiered in London, at the Wigmore Hall, in 1942. A set of complicated poems in Renaissance Italian by Michelangelo, they are intensely erotic and homosexual in their imagery. The idea that these two men, who were already pretty unpopular for being pacifists, came back to Britain and got up on stage and performed these songs is extraordinary. I don't think people quite realised what was happening because the songs were in Italian." (The road to perfection: Ian Bostridge's best of Benjamin Britten)
Next Tuesday, November 19th, is Schubert’s death anniversary; as you all know, the apple of my eye. One year ago I gave you five reasons to love Schubert; today I would like to give you one more reason, a Lied that I've been leaving aside for months waiting for an opportunity like this. I didn't choose it because it was among my favourite, I’ve got dozens of favourite Schubert's songs; I did it because there's a word that comes to my mind every time I listen to it which is elegance. Schubert's music is not characterized by its lack of delicacy, but here I'm talking about… daring elegance.
We continue the Wilhelm Meister's songs series. In the previous post we left Wilhelm on a business trip after his breaking up with Mariane and the theatre, at the very moment he goes to a small town for a few days to take a rest. A place where he will meet some of the characters that will go with him throughout the novel and will come across old acquaintances.
What do you think a specialized blog in 20th & 21th century Opera and one about Art Song have in common? Apart from this strong impulse to talk over minority subjects? Well, they have in common Strauss, Britten, Korngold, Berg... many composers. The two of us, OperaXX and Liederabend, thought that it would be a nice idea to talk about the same new composer in both blogs this week. I can give you a hint for his name: we are going to listen to newest song in this blog so far. But let's go step by step...
Even though the equinox announces autumn's arrival, in Barcelona this season is lazy and it takes some more weeks to show up. In the meantime we people keep wearing short sleeve clothing and sandals; at the most we take a jacket if we go out early in the morning. Eventually, one day... thermometers go down and get stuck at 18º or 20º and people from Barcelona can finally wrap up as mannequins in shop windows at mid of August (amazingly enough... now mannequins are already wearing coats...).
