European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Three for Three: Summer Festival Opera Premieres by Picker, Rihm and Subotnick

Sep. 03, 2010

The 2010 summer saw the world premieres of three new operas from the Schott/EAM family. Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox in a new chamber orchestration at London’s Opera Holland Park, Morton Subotnick’s long awaited one-act opera Jacob’s Room at Bregenz, and Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysus at Salzburg made waves in the contemporary music community as three operas not to be missed. See what the critics had to say:

Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox–Opera Holland Park (world premiere of new chamber version):

It was expertly done and deserves a life beyond west London. OHP has high hopes that, with festivals such as Latitude showing interest, it will.
–Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian, UK

The music is highly accessible to children, without ever feeling patronizing towards them. For this reason it seems perfectly suited to giving youngsters their first taste of an operatic experience, while adults should also find much within the notes to take an interest in. The score does not contain catchy melodies, and much of the music feels very minimalist with the fox cubs chanting ‘Boggis, Bunce and Bean, one short, one fat, one lean’. There were occasions when I was reminded of Harrison Birtwistle, but there are also moments of melancholic lyricism and spirituality as the sprites sing ‘Who knows what trees hear?’ The farmers’ first song, on the other hand, feels reminiscent thematically, if not musically, of a Gilbert and Sullivan trio.
– Sam Smith, whatsonstage.com

Morton Subotnick: Jacob’s Room–Bregenz Festival, Art of Our Times:

The work was surprising, convincing not only in its virtuosity, but also its function as a means of expression of suppressed pain and traumatic memories.
– Suedkurier

Jacob's Room describes a journey through the tormented psyche and difficult memories of a survivor. This chamber opera's beginnings lie in the 1970s, but the work was never realized until now. Based on the novel Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf, on Plato's Phaedrus and other texts, Subotnick has developed a complex chamber piece about dreams and repressed memories of traumatic childhood experiences.
– deFacto News Service

Wolfgang Rihm: Dionysus–Salzburg Festival:

Dionysus is mythical and magical… a musically compelling, sometimes ravishing allegorical exploration of man's quest to embrace the Dionysian sensuality of life. Mr. Rihm's score, while recognizably the music of a formidable atonal modernist, pulses with Wagnerian sweep, Straussian lushness and astringently alluring harmonic writing beholden to Berg yet somehow fresh… music of intriguing complexity and sheer sensual allure.
– Anthony Tommasini, New York Times

Rihm's score, alternately erotic, expressionist and ecstatic, tries to make up the deficit, employing a highly allusive kaleidoscope of colours and moods that puts German musical tradition through an attractive contemporary filter.
– Andrew Clark, Financial Times, London

Composer Profiles:

Tobias Picker
Fantastic Mr. Fox (1998, arr. 2010) 
opera in three acts
libretto (En) by Donald Sturrock
for 2S, 3 Mz, 2T, 2Bar, B-Bar, B, 4 treble voices or children's chorus
cl(bcl), bsn, perc, pno, vn, va, vc
60'

Morton Subotnick
Jacob's Room (2010)
chamber opera in one act
libretto (En) by Morton Subotnick inspired by Phaedrus by Plato, Eleni by Nicholas Gage, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival by Alicia Partnoy, The Holocaust Kingdom: A Memoir by Alexander Donat and Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf.
for S, Mz, B-Bar, High Bar
keyboard, cello section(min. 4 players) and electronics
ca. 85'

Wolfgang Rihm
Dionysus (2009/2010)
Scenes and Dithyrambs – an operatic fantasia
based on texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, libretto (Ger) by the composer
for 2 High S, Mz, A, High Bar, T and chorus
2.2.3.2-4.2.3.1–timp.5perc.2hp.cel.pno-str
120'

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