Ed,
After reading Manny’s fantastic response to this thread, I went back and read the whole thing again. The content here is just fantastic! What a great opportunity for all of us to have a discussion like this (I know I learn something every time I post a question here)!
On my read through, your response to one of my posts caught my eye again. You wrote:
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Never say never and it's a good thing you didn't write your post about Prokofiev's Scynthian Suite or Ades' Living Toys (yikes!).
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While I’ve never heard either of these pieces, I just took away the general impression that these were pieces with extremely challenging parts in the trumpet book the first time that I read your post. On the second reading,
Ades caught my eye, and I remembered that we had heard the world premiere of his opera “The Tempest” in Santa Fe this past summer. Your words took on a new meaning for me!
This is snapshot of a post that I made of my trip to Santa Fe this past summer about his opera:
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We also saw the Tempest on Saturday night (just me and my Mom). Wow! Talk about night and day from Cinderella! It was very well done; Ariel had the most awesome part you can imagine, soaring up to G above High C dozens of times during the 3 Act opera. I’m glad that I got to see this opera, but it’s one that I wouldn’t go to again (too atonal for me). I’m glad that I took my boys to the one on Friday.
If you can imagine a beach scene, complete with sand and water on stage, and a big ominous leafless tree, Miranda came out to play on the beach and wade in the water while everyone was coming in to find their seats in the audience. She was just wandering around on the beach enjoying herself before the overture (portraying her happy childhood). When the overture began it was extremely dark, angry music. The lights came down, and Prospero (her Dad) came out and tried to comfort her. Then flashes of lightning and two by two the dead bodies of the ship caught in the Tempest began to emerge from the water and walk past Miranda and Prospero on the beach. They we all fully dressed and soaking wet. Man, talk about a visual image that I will never forget.
After being bombarded with this striking visual image and bizarre and violent atonal sounds from the orchestra for at least 10 minutes, the entire “chorus” of dead people chanted four syllables: “Hell is Emp-ty” (choose a middle range pitch for the first note, the lowest note everyone can sing for the 2nd, the highest notn (not in relationship to either of the first two), and then a fairly high note to get a feel for this entrance).
Man, that was certainly the wildest wide I’ve ever experienced at the opera! I can only imagine what Living Toys must be like!
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