Luigi Dallapiccola's "Il prigioniero"
A great work! From the opening scene of the mother ( really gripping) and the grand choral interludes to the eerily haunting "fratello" motif - the tragic end!
I mention again Ravel's l'Enfant et les sortilèges.
This afternoon I heard Albert Roussel's 'Padmâvati" on the radio ( Jean Martinon conducting BBC forces - ca 1968-1969) - an opulent,glittering score.
this version should still be available!
And I was deeply impressed by by Klas Torstensson (January 16, 1951, Sweden) opera "The expedition" .
Torstensson’s compositions have been performed by orchestras, ensembles and soloists worldwide and presented on most major European new music festivals: Huddersfield, Ultima (Oslo), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Wien Modern, Stockholm New Music, Nordic Music Days (Reykjavik/Malmö/Berlin), Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), Warsaw, Gaida (Vilnius), Festival van Vlaanderen (Belgium), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), GAS (Gothenburg), NYYD (Tallinn), Darmstadt, to name only a few. He was also featured composer at festivals such as Stockholm New Music 1999 (together with Mauricio Kagel and György Kurtág), Time of Music 2001, (Viitasaari, Finland), and Montréal-Nouvelles-Musiques 2003.
In 1991 Torstensson received the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize - the most prestigious composition prize in The Netherlands, in 1999 followed by the Stora Christ Johnson Priset, the major Swedish composition prize awarded by the Swedish Royal Music Academy. Torstensson’s opera The Expedition was a nominee for the Nordic Council Music Prize 2006, whereas the Intermezzo from the same opera received a recommendation by the jury of the International Rostrum of Composers in 1999.
Urban Songs for soprano Charlotte Riedijk, Ensemble Intercontemporain and computers - commissioned by Ircam, Paris -, was premiered in 1992, and was to be programmed for another two seasons by the same ensemble, as well as by many other European ensembles, such as Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Asko Ensemble (Amsterdam) and Kammar-ensembleN (Stockholm).
In 1994 Torstensson composed The Last Diary for reciting voice and large ensemble, based on the diaries of S.A. Andrées, leader of the tragic Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. The Last Diary has in the past decade also been translated into German - for performances in Vienna and Graz with H.K. Gruber in the role of Andrée - and Icelandic.
The same material served as a basic for his opera The Expedition (1994-1999) for soloists, orchestra and electronics, to a libretto written by the composer. The opera was premiered in concert form during the 1999 Holland Festival in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, in a performance conducted by Peter Eötvös. Performances followed in Germany, Sweden and Norway.From 1999 to 2002 Torstensson wrote a full-length cycle entitled Lantern Lectures. The cycle was a joint commission by Le Nouvel Ensemble Modern (Montréal), Asko Ensemble (Amsterdam), KammarensembleN (Stockholm) and Klangforum Wien. Over the past years Lantern Lectures has been performed some thirty times, by seven ensembles in thirteen countries.
The work has been issued on CD - but I don't know if it is still available.
Read more at
http://www.donemus.nl/componist.php?id=18
