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Brooklyn Academy of Music Presents Rodion Shchedrin's The Enchanted Wanderer

Dec. 17, 2014

Brooklyn Academy of Music Presents Rodion Shchedrin's <em>The Enchanted Wanderer</em>

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and Mariinsky Theatre team up to present a one-time performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s rarely performed opera The Enchanted Wanderer on January 14, conducted by Valery Gergiev. Alexei Stepanyuk directs, with set design by Alexander Orlov, costume design by Irina Cherednikova, lighting by Yevgeny Ganzburg and choreography by Dmitry Korneyev. The production premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 2008 and has since toured to international acclaim.

Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and conceived as an opera for the concert stage, The Enchanted Wanderer is based on the short story by Nikolai Leskov. The opera synthesizes gypsy songs, Russian Orthodox choral music, and traditional Slavic instruments with 20th-century idioms. The Moscow newspaper Vremya Novostei wrote of the premiere:

[In The Wanderer] Shchedrin avoids traditional operatic approaches... there are neither developed scenes as such nor sweet love duets, but there is an aural continuum of impossible beauty in which vocal and choral voices are blended together, underscored by a thousand different orchestral timbres... Also enchanting in The Wanderer was the countless number of shades of silence – melting, lulling, oppressive, terrifying, thoughtful: Shchedrin is one of few composers who have the skill to construct music not just from notes but from pauses too. 

For more information on Rodion Shchedrin, please visit schott-music.com.

Details on the performance can be found at bam.org.

Rodion Shchedrin
The Enchanted Wanderer (2001-02)
an opera for the concert stage
libretto (Rus) by Rodion Shchedrin, based on the story by Nikolaj Leskov
for mezzo-soprano, tenor, bass, mixed choir and orchestra
2(afl, pic).2blfl.2(2.ca).2(2. bcl).2(2.cbsn)-2.2.2.2-timp.5perc-Balalaika.Gusli.hp.pno(cel, cemb)-str
85’

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