Andriessen: La Commedia premiere at Holland Festival
(April 2008)
The world premiere of Louis Andriessen’s opera based on Dante’s La Commedia takes place in Amsterdam on 12 June, providing one of the highlights of this year’s Holland Festival, with further performances on 14-18 June.Described by the composer as a ‘film opera’, the new full-evening work is a collaboration between Andriessen and film director Hal Hartley, following on from earlier stageworks created with Robert Wilson (De Materie) and Peter Greenaway (ROSA The Death of a Composer and Writing to Vermeer). La Commedia was commissioned with the financial support of the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst and the Netherlands Opera.
La Commedia receives six performances at the Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam (12,14-18 June). Reinbert de Leeuw, the leading exponent of Andriessen’s music, conducts the combined forces of the Asko and Schoenberg Ensembles. Vocalists include soprano Claron McFadden as Beatrice, Cristina Zavalloni and Jeroen Willems who sing the music most associated with Dante and Lucifer respectively, a chorus octet from Synergy Vocals and a children’s chorus. Integrated with Andriessen’s score are a series of electronic soundscapes by the young Dutch composer Anke Brouwer.
Summing up his admiration for the Italian poet's work, Andriessen said: “I see Dante’s La Commedia as one of the highest points ever reached in literature and philosophy. It combines complexity, intellectualism, horror, beauty, multi-layering, allusions, historical and mythological references, and, above all, irony. I selected sequences of material in the same order as in Dante’s book. So the first two scenes take us from the City of Dis down through Inferno to the deepest regions of hell where we meet Lucifer in the third part. This is where Adam’s Fall is described. We then pass upward through the lighter-hearted Garden of Earthly Delights until we reach Paradise in the final section, Eternal Light.”
As an upbeat to the premiere of La Commedia, Reinbert de Leeuw conducts the Asko and Schoenberg Ensembles in concert performances of De Materie in Rotterdam (29 May) and Amsterdam (4 June). Andriessen’s future works include a new double piano concerto for the Labeque Sisters to be premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen in January 2009.
> Read this press release as a PDF Download
> Read an interview with Louis Andriessen on La Commedia
> For tickets for La Commedia visit www.dno.nl
> Further information on Work: La Commedia
Photo: Francesca Patella
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