̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - opera

Music to the ears: Liszt’s lost opera

ehs33 — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 13:48:34 +0000

Liszt's lost opera heard for the first time in 170 years

Abandoned Liszt opera finally brought to life - 170 years later

sjr81 — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:01:43 +0000

David Trippett, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, first encountered the opera languishing in an archive in Weimar more than ten years ago. A trailer with extracts of the opera being performed can be seen by clicking on the link above.

Known only to a handful of Liszt scholars, the manuscript – with much of its music written in shorthand and only one act completed – was assumed to be fragmentary, often illegible and consequently indecipherable.

However, after Trippett spent the last two years working critically on the manuscript, a ten-minute preview will now be performed for the first time in public as part of the world-famous BBC Cardiff Singer of the World contest in June.

“In 1849 Liszt began composing an Italian opera, but he abandoned it halfway through and the music he completed has lain silently in an archive for nearly 170 years,” said Trippett. “This project is about bringing it to life for the very first time.”

“ ̽��ֱ��music that survives is breath-taking – a unique blend of Italianate lyricism and harmonic innovation. There is nothing else quite like it in the operatic world. It is suffused with Liszt’s characteristically mellifluous musical language, but was written at a time that he was first discovering Wagner’s operas.

“ ̽��ֱ��only source for this opera is a single manuscript containing 111 pages of music for piano and voices. It was always assumed to be impossible to piece together, but after examining the notation in detail, it became clear Liszt had notated all the cardinal elements for act 1. You have to think through the artistic decisions traceable in the manuscript and try to reconstruct the creative process, to see how Liszt’s mind went this way and that.”

A critical edition of the music for act 1 will be published by Editio Musica Budapest (Universal Music Publishing) in 2018. Although Trippett has worked alone on rescuing the music Liszt notated, Cambridge’s Francesca Vella has worked on deciphering the Italian text alongside musicologist David Rosen, whose principal role has been to translate the libretto into English.

̽��ֱ��libretto, based on Lord Byron’s tragedy Sardanapalus, tells the story of Sardanapalo, King of Assyria, a peace-loving monarch, more interested in revelry and women than politics and war. He deplores violence and brutality, and, perhaps naively, he believes in the innate goodness of humankind, but is overthrown by rebels and burns himself alive with his lover, Mirra, amid scents and spices in a great inferno.

A ten-minute scene from the opera will be performed at the final of the BBC Singer of the World event by Armenian soprano and rising talent Anush Hovhannisyan.

“In effect, the manuscript has been hiding in plain sight for well over 100 years,” added Trippett. “It was written for Liszt’s eyes only, and has various types of musical shorthand, with spatial gaps in the manuscript. A lot of it is very hard to read, but the scruffiness is deceptive. It seems Liszt worked out all the music in his head before he put pen to paper, and to retrieve this music, I’ve had to try and put myself into the mind of a 19th-century composer, a rare challenge and a remarkable opportunity.

“Fortunately, Liszt left just enough information to retrieve what was evidently the continuous musical conception he had at the time. We will never know exactly why he abandoned his work on the opera and I suspect he would have been surprised to learn that it is resurfacing in the 21st century. But I like to think he would have smiled on it.”

Ahead of the BBC event in June, Trippett and his colleagues are putting the finishing touches to a documentary film for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge chronicling the resurrection of Liszt’s forgotten masterpiece, with singers Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor) and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone). This will be released on 15 May.

“Who else gets to premiere a new opera by a superstar composer from two centuries ago?” said soprano Hovhannisyan. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the entire process of making it work – from thinking about the character and what Liszt would want – has been a privilege. We have had a wonderful, deeply creative and imaginative time piecing this together and I feel very blessed to have been a part of it.”

An Italian opera by Franz Liszt – which lay incomplete and largely forgotten in a German archive for nearly two centuries – will be given its world premiere this summer after being resurrected by a Cambridge academic.

̽��ֱ��music that survives is breath-taking. There is nothing else quite like it in the operatic world

David Trippett

Abandoned Liszt opera brought to life

Tom Andrews/ ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor), and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone) record the trio finale with pianist and musicologist David Trippett, in Jesus College Chapel, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

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Kepler's Trial: An Opera

amb206 — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 10:30:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��trial in which the famous astronomer, Johannes Kepler, defended his mother from accusations of witchcraft has been turned into an opera, following new research into the original 17th-century legal proceedings.

̽��ֱ��opera was conceived by Cambridge historian Professor Ulinka Rublack, a fellow of St John’s College. It made its debut in October as part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Festival of Ideas. A film of Kepler’s Trial: An Opera is now available online.

Born in 1571, Johannes Kepler is one of the most admired astronomers who ever lived. He came from an ordinary family but became a major figure in the scientific revolution. He defended Copernicus’s idea that the sun was at the centre of the universe and defined three laws of planetary motion.

In 1615, at the height of his powers, Kepler abandoned his research to defend his elderly mother, Katharina, from charges of witchcraft. Her trial took place at the height of Europe’s infamous ‘witch-craze’. Thousands of people, mostly women, were executed for supposed dealings in the occult, and families were torn apart in a climate of paranoia and distrust.

̽��ֱ��new opera tells the remarkable tale of Katharina’s six-year ordeal, and her son’s dogged, and ultimately successful, defence. Rublack’s recent book, ̽��ֱ��Astronomer and the Witch, is the first to provide a full account of the case.

It is not the first time that aspects of Johannes Kepler’s life have been given the operatic treatment. Philip Glass’s Kepler focused on the astronomer’s life and work, but overlooked the trial completely. In 1957, the German composer, Paul Hindemith, composed Die Harmonie der Welt (Harmony Of ̽��ֱ��World, also the title of one of Kepler’s most famous works.)

Like many other accounts of Kepler’s story, which either unwittingly swallow the 17th-century prosecution’s character assassination of Katharina, or reproduce it for dramatic effect, these treatments presented Kepler’s mother as crazed and witchlike.

Rublack sees the most recent opera as a response, in particular, to Hindemith’s work. “When I finished the book, I thought, there really has got to be a new opera about the subject now,” she said. “Hindemith depicts Katharina as a crazed, old crone. I wanted to put together a team to develop new perspectives and create a new way to tell the story.”

Kepler's Trial: An Opera draws on Rublack's research with supporting contributions from a group of interdisciplinary scholars and academics. ̽��ֱ��libretto was written by Tim Watts, a composer who teaches music at St John’s College and lectures in the ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Music.

̽��ֱ��performance features video sequences by the artist Aura Satz, who is based at the Royal College of Art. ̽��ֱ��videos are designed to amplify its presiding themes: darkness and light, sight and illusion, and competing depictions of an ageing and vulnerable woman.

“Around 25,000 people were executed for witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Rublack said. “When Katharina was accused in 1615, she was actually at a point in her life when things were going very well. ̽��ֱ��accusation came as completely unexpected for her and the family, and turned into something profoundly disturbing.”

Although she was ultimately acquitted thanks to her son’s defence (as well as helpful connections in the upper echelons of the justice system), the trial had devastating consequences. Katharina was disowned by two of her other children and spent 14 months of the trial period living in a prison cell, chained to the floor. She emerged both physically and emotionally exhausted, and died just six months later.

̽��ֱ��opera makes use of musical styles from the time, drawing inspiration from the likes of Claudio Monteverdi as well as found materials such as contemporary drinking songs. It is performed using instruments that would have been popular during the period, such as cornets, sackbuts, and harpsichord.

̽��ֱ��premiere took place in the atmospheric surroundings of the Chapel of St John’s College. ̽��ֱ��six violinists playing at the event were all from St John's; they included the College's Musician-in-Residence, Margaret Faultless, as well as five students.

̽��ֱ��trial papers are still preserved in regional archives in Stuttgart. ̽��ֱ��libretto draws on the actual words of both Katharina and Johannes Kepler as they were recorded in court. Fragments of Katharina’s voice come through in prayers and her response to cross-examination, taken from the transcripts.

“It’s been easier to invent a voice for Katharina than it has been to define one for her son,” Watts reflected. “So many of his words exist already and we know a large amount about the kind of man he was, so there’s a lot more to filter.”

“ ̽��ֱ��way that we tell the story offers a huge range for potential identification with characters and elements. There is a sense of worlds and generations colliding; it’s my hope that the piece involves such a range of character and generation that it will appeal to an equally wide range of people.”

An ambitious opera, telling the story of an infamous witch trial, was premiered in October. A film of Kepler's Trial the Opera is now available online. ̽��ֱ��project was conceived by historian Professor Ulinka Rublack whose recent research shines new light on a 400-year-old scandal.

Kepler 's Trial

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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