Berio's Passagio on H&N

[Serial_Apologist]

One of the few and most important contributions to avant-garde opera of the 1960s in a 1990 performance of Berio's revolutionary opera is due for broadcast tonight at 10.15, along with Sciarrino's opera about Gesualdo.

This is what Radio 3 should be about. Unmissable, I'd say.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038kzdl

[aeolium]

Thanks for the heads up, S_A. I shall definitely try to listen to the Berio. I'm not sure about the Sciarrino as I am going to see the same performers playing it at Cardiff in October. Should I familiarise myself with the work or come to the work/performance completely afresh?

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the heads up, S_A. I shall definitely try to listen to the Berio. I'm not sure about the Sciarrino as I am going to see the same performers playing it at Cardiff in October. Should I familiarise myself with the work or come to the work/performance completely afresh?

You could always record it, then save watching it until after seeing the work...

[Anna]

One of the few and most important contributions to avant-garde opera of the 1960s in a 1990 performance of Berio's revolutionary opera is due for broadcast tonight at 10.15, along with Sciarrino's opera about Gesualdo.

This is what Radio 3 should be about. Unmissable, yes, it should, but it it ain't

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is what Radio 3 should be about.

Unmissable, I'd say.

[Roehre]

One of the few and most important contributions to avant-garde opera of the 1960s in a 1990 performance of Berio's revolutionary opera is due for broadcast tonight at 10.15, along with Sciarrino's opera about Gesualdo.

This is what Radio 3 should be about. Unmissable, I'd say.

[Daniel]

Really glad I caught this before it disappeared off the iPlayer.

For some reason I had been expecting the Berio to be much longer, and the ending came rather suddenly. Pretty vivid, like the theatre was being taken over in realtime. I think I'd have got even more from it if I'd understood in more detail what the main female character was singing.The fact that some of the performers were contributing from the auditorium gave some of it an extra spatial dimension, like being present in the middle of a restless street scene, that I can't recall hearing elsewhere.

But wow, the Sciarrino felt more like being in the middle of their brains! What an extraordinary and hypnotic thing it is! I don't want to ramble, but briefly to set a drama of such passion in such a constrained and quiet way was a stroke of genius I think. The result has such intensity and subliminality, if that's a word. Hard to describe, in a way it sounded like a 21C baroque opera to me, periodically interrupted by an original 16C instrumental interlude that gradually decays at each appearance (the later appearances I found particularly haunting). The fantastic understated vocal lines were so expressive, quite baroque in feel as I said, and the effect was more and more mesmerising as it went on. It was very surreal too, in one way it felt a bit like being harangued by a butterfly with pointed toecaps in the middle of a daydream (a constant problem for the residents of N.London) very unsettling, and as the excellent Paul Griffiths said, very intimate.

I don't think I would have connected with it quite so well first time had it not been in English, but I'd love to hear it in Italian now. Anyway, I'm very grateful R3 has rained these treasures down.

[Quarky]

Many thanks for giving us your views Daniel.

Posts like that are the main reason I subscribe to for3. It's nice to know what someone else thinks about a broadcast!