My IU connection reminds me that Indiana University Jacobs School of Music is live-streaming the world premiere of a new opera by P. Q. Phan,
The Tale of Lady Thị Kính. The first run was tonight but you can catch it again tomorrow (Feb 8) at 8pm EST,
here.
thanks for the link Stray! am currently following.. though the tiny bit i'm catching so far.. not liking the libretto... spelling out everything in spoken english.. must be my normal quib... ('I'm sooo depressed, sooo depressed that i can not eat"... <-- current spoken libretto..) -td
ReplyDeleteLOL I see what you mean about the libretto, he might have done better to through-compose it. Will have to read the blog and see if he says why he decided not to.
Deleteonto scene where she's adopting and raising the baby of the woman who accused her.. quite moving, i think the one singing thi. Ki'nh is shaping the phrases veeery nicely . turns out my sister(s) and friend all learned this in school.. i must have ditched class coz i haven't heard at all of it until now! :D -td
ReplyDeleteThought the orchestration was pretty cool -- lots for percussionists to do! And the brass section got a serious workout there at the end. Wonder if the trumpets were supposed to sound like that or if they were all just on the verge of passing out by then.
DeleteHa! Not to worry, I expect a lot of us use the opera house for catching up on the things we blew off in grade school :P
come to think of it, it could have been all in vietnamese since the story is already in poetry form, though i can imaging how the singers would suffer :D (though they seem to do fine with "Nam mô A di đà Phật") actually if that's ever the case, then they need to pick the other story which is legendary in vietnamese literature and much more poetic and is the staple from first to 12th grades and beyond.. this one, the language is not as fancy (in the original poetry). -td
ReplyDeleteSo how much gets lost when a Vietnamese lyric is adapted to a vocal line that's written according to a european scale?
Deletei meant to reply but kept forgetting.. actually they would need to hire a new librettist altogether still.. because the original poetry was in narrative format, same way as narrative in Bach Matthaeuspassion -td
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