Following the Proms premiere of the concert work arranged by the composer from her last award-winning opera Between Worlds, this week's programme presents a recording from the premiere production of the second Music Theatre work by Tansy Davies(b1973) with her collaborator, librettist Nick Drake. Jointly commissioned by the Royal Opera House et al, the performances were presented at the disused south London warehouse, Printworks - a suitably cavernous performing venue - and uses a plot that has faint resonances of both the Divine Comedy (Dante, not Hannon) and Troy Kennedy Martin's 1980s TV series Edge of Darkness - but here set in a future world devastated by climate change, in which a father communicates with his absent daughter.
A chamber opera (lasting about an hour) for two singers (here Tenor Mark Padmore and Mezzo Elaine Mitchener) and chamber ensemble (the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson) - the broadcast is presented by Kate Molleson, and the programme is filled by "a specially selected playlist" by the composer. (I don't know if this is a selection of her own works, or of those by other composers that particularly appeal to her, or both/neither.)
(The photo in that link is of presenter Kate Molleson, not the composer.)
Having been very impressed with Davies' earlier works when they first appeared, I shall listen hopefully - but as her more recent work hasn't inspired anything like a comparable excitement, this will be more hope than expectation. I suspect that it will be by some distance the most impressive Music Theatre piece that H&N will have broadcast in some months - but given the "competition", that won't be at all difficult.
A chamber opera (lasting about an hour) for two singers (here Tenor Mark Padmore and Mezzo Elaine Mitchener) and chamber ensemble (the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson) - the broadcast is presented by Kate Molleson, and the programme is filled by "a specially selected playlist" by the composer. (I don't know if this is a selection of her own works, or of those by other composers that particularly appeal to her, or both/neither.)
(The photo in that link is of presenter Kate Molleson, not the composer.)
Having been very impressed with Davies' earlier works when they first appeared, I shall listen hopefully - but as her more recent work hasn't inspired anything like a comparable excitement, this will be more hope than expectation. I suspect that it will be by some distance the most impressive Music Theatre piece that H&N will have broadcast in some months - but given the "competition", that won't be at all difficult.