In 1963, Robert Silverberg published To See The Invisible Man, a dystopian short story in which an individual is punished for “the crime of coldness” by a judicially enforced loneliness, a subject which Emily Howard has turned into opera as an Aldeburgh Festival commission. While this production is strong and vibrant, Emily Howard’s opera itself is…
“One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!” George Eliot (in Middlemarch) points us to the social circularity behind a gift: and this Hansel given at Snape was a perfect example, with three exceptional musicians, Julius Drake, Mark Padmore and Krzysztof Chorzelski, ‘giving back’ their skills in performance in aid of two charities…
The most interesting thing about The Corridor, in classical terms, is the moment, and mood, that David Harsent (librettist) and Harrison Birtwistle (composer) have chosen to dramatise. So many treatments of this myth in later art focus either on Orpheus’ descent to hell, or the moment when he turns (too soon) and Eurydice is snatched…