Blood-drenched monster myth brought to opera stage
Jack London (Reuters) - The grim Greek myth of the Minotaur, half-beast and half-human, has been brought to living in a freshly, blood-drenched opera by lead Brits composer Harrison Birtwistle.
The 73-year-old, dubbed the "senior high school non-Christian priest of coeval British music" by the Daily Telegraph, has worked on the musical composition for terzetto years, and composed it specifically for the Royal Opera House where it had its reality premier this week.
A group of Innocents is sacrificed to the wolf in his lair as a crowd around the bull mob bays for blood. Unity is raped, and vulture-like, shriek Keres charge the hearts from the victims.
"I think it's a rattling dark slice," Birtwistle told Reuters earlier the curtains went up on the thirstily anticipated work.
Critics agreed, describing the firearm as "barbaric" and "strange." Several reminded readers that, as expected with Birtwistle, the powerful and primitive sexual conquest offered few hum-along arias to take away afterward the testify.
"The Audio of Euphony it ain't," wrote The Times's Richard James Douglas Morrison.
Birtwistle had renowned British people basso Trick Tomlinson in head for the portion of the Minotaur, and his performance from behindhand a semi-transparent bull's mask evokes the audience's sympathy rather than repugnance in the fresh interpretation of the myth.
Librettist and poet Saint David Harsent came up with the estimation of giving the Minotaur the mightiness of linguistic communication through dreams, allowing it to express the desolation and depravation of an being trapped in the internal ear and an animal's body.
