#DNO is leading the way and I am very impressed

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

I messed up the order: immediately before "L'altra notte" was a second Chinese song, also very well-performed:

after that a little girl from the children's chorus told a story of a dream she had about her family; then the rest of the children's chorus came on and sang a really lovely French choral piece about kites and flying:

then an odd moment—a contemporary song (I think written specifically for this project?) superimposed over music from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique:

(why don't they have captions for the recorded songs?)

then a lullaby composed by someone I'd never heard of by Claude Vivier; this one will stick in my head for a while:

a third call-back to Mefistofele with a performance of the Walpurgisnacht chorus from Act II:

then a reading of excerpts from Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem "We Wear the Mask" (fitting given the times):

and a frankly unsettling arrangement of Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade that included material of the Dunbar poem:

and a bit of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand:

then first a South-Asian-infused arrangement of a Brahms piece and after that an electronic late-20th-century American composition while the chorus played with a huge white tarp:

and then the show ends with people slowly stepping onto the tarp. every time someone steps onto the tarp, a different bit of music plays: everything from part of the prologue of Mefistofele to Spanish guitar music. reading the live chat made it even cooler: it turns out that the piece was being composed in real time, as some of the sounds (particularly the electronic and whoosh sounds) were triggered by body sensors picking up movements from the performers. how cool is that?!?!

all in all, fantastic show. great experimental work. great representation. we need more stuff like this.

#opera #opera tag #seriously go watch this it’s on OperaVision #Faust [working title] #and to think they put it all together in just a few months! #Faust #experimentation #innovation #multimedia #representation #Dutch National Opera #DNO is leading the way and I am very impressed