Shadowtime | |
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Opera by Brian Ferneyhough | |
Librettist | Charles Bernstein |
Language | English |
Premiere |
Shadowtime is the first opera by Brian Ferneyhough, written to an English libretto by Charles Bernstein. It was written from 1999 to 2004 and was premiered on 25 May 2004 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. The City of Munich commissioned the composition and libretto in 1999 for the Munich Biennale. It is in seven scenes ( Bernstein 2008 ):
The composer regards Opus contra naturam, a scene set to the composer's own text and played by a Liberace-like figure, as the centre-piece of the opera ( Whittall 2003 , 27).
The opera begins with the suicide/death of philosopher Walter Benjamin and goes on to deal with various aspects of his writings and philosophy from the point of view of his descent into the underworld ( Bernstein 2008 ).
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance into serial composition, and for musical spatialization.
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and the University of California, San Diego; he teaches at Stanford University and is a regular lecturer in the summer courses at Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He has resided in California since 1987.
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