Andriessen: towards Dante's La Commedia
(January 2008)
Los Angeles audiences were granted a preview taster of Louis Andriessen’s much anticipated Dante-inspired stagework La Commedia, which opens at the Holland Festival on 12 June.
The City of Dis or The Ship of Fools, which forms the first part of the ‘film opera’, was premiered at Disney Hall by the Los Angeles Master Chorale on 18 November conducted by Grant Gershon. The Los Angeles Times described Andriessen’s new work as “brilliantly disquieting” with “the bright, brazen sound that is unmistakeably his”:
“Despite a certain resemblance to the worst scenes from Baghdad, Andriessen’s Dis is a universal city. And this most urban of composers celebrates sex in the city and compassion, while acknowledging death and destruction… Andriessen is as deadly serious a composer as any I know, but he also has a fully developed sense of irony and wondrous appreciation of, and perhaps fondness for, folly… Andriessen likens The Ship of Fools to a metaphor for life – namely, we sail through existence doing business, getting drunk, muddling through.
“Instrumental combinations proved breathtaking. A solo viola, solo alto and guitar, in a kind of Stravinskyan bebop, announce “a thousand angels fallen from heaven”. A contrabass clarinet and electric bass guitar together are “turbid waves”. Clattering metal are Messiaen taken to a new dimension. The storm at the end wickedly rattles a listener’s bones.”
Los Angeles Times
La Commedia (2004-08)
(world premiere)
Film opera in five parts
Texts by Dante, Vondel and others, and from the Old Testament
Electronic inserts by Anke Brouwer
Commissioned by the Netherlands Opera
Reinbert de Leeuw Conductor
Hal Hartley Director
Beatrice: Claron McFadden
Dante: Cristina Zavalloni
Lucifer: Jeroen Willems
Asko Ensemble/Schoenberg Ensemble/Synergy Vocals
Netherlands Opera
12/14/15/16/17/18 June 2008
Holland Festival
Koninklijk Theater Carré, Amsterdam
www.dno.nl
> Further information on Work: The City of Dis or: The Ship of Fools
Photo: Francesca Patella
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