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2024-03-19
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2021-04-26 08:06:16
A new film inspired by George Orwell's 1984 has Mihkel Kerem's powerful new orchestral score at its heart
1984 - New European Ensemble, Mihkel Kerem George Orwell, Mihkel Kerem 1984; Edward Snowden, Joseph Thompson, Willem Stam, New European Ensemble, Mihkel Kerem, Gijs Besseling, Emlyn Stam and Sophie Hunter; Greengage, OnJam TV Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 26 April 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★) A powerful new film which uses Mihkel Kerem's dramatic orchestral score to explore themse from Orwell's novel1984 is a new film directed by Gijs Besseling, Emlyn Stam and Sophie Hunter which debuted on OnJam TV on Friday 23 April 2021. The 65 minute film is inspired by George Orwell's novel, but it not so much a dramatisation of the novel as a cross-arts recreation of themes from Orwell's 1984. The film features just two speaking roles, American National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has a spoken introduction and the actor Joseph Thompson is a George Orwell-like narrator figure. The main emotional impulse comes […]
2021-01-24 10:59:43
A Life On-Line: Mad King in the Netherlands, Mozart & Boulogne in Perth, Allegri in Sistine Chapel
The Mad King - Charles Johnston - Opera2Day The Dutch company Opera2Day (whose staging of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet I saw in The Hague in 2018) solved the problem of what to perform during the restrictions of lockdown by turning to a one-man opera. But with a difference. Opera2Day's latest production, The Mad King, recently live-streamed, was based around Peter Maxwell Davies' music theatre piece Eight Songs for a Mad King, but re-conceived by composer Brendan Faegre. Faegre had composed new music and re-orchestrated music by Handel and interwove these new elements around the eight Maxwell Davies movements to create a new music theatre work lasting around an hour. We were still in the mad universe of the poor King (baritone Charles Johnston) with his birds (the instrumentalists of the New European Ensemble, musical director Hernán Schvartzman, plus the mime artist Bodine Sutorius) and his music boxes (including a self-playing organ from […]
2018-05-19 08:21:18
A very psychological approach: I chat to Serge van Veggel, artistic director of Opera2Day
[…] of scores and parts from the period. Having performed Cherubini's Medee in 2014, Hamlet further acknowledged this French tradition.But the company has a third perspective on the opera, that of performance practice. The Hague was an important centre for the Early Music movement in the 1970s and remains a centre of study. Hernán Schvartzman, the conductor of Hamlet, came from Argentina to study Early Music in The Hague. Emlyn Stam, the artistic coordinator of the New European Ensemble, is doing a PhD in the performance practice in the early modern period, the first singers that we can hear on disc. And it was these singers and their performance practice, portamenti and all, which informed the productions of Dr Miracle and Hamlet. Opera2Day - La troupe d'Orphee (photo Hans Oostrum) The company's approach is not slavish but Serge feels that gives the singers greater freedom, especially as it avoids the […]
2018-02-01 08:15:55
Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet re-invented in the Hague
Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet - Opera2Day - Quirijn de Lang, Martijn Sanders, Joop Keesmat (Photo Ben van Duin) Ambroise Thomas Hamlet; Quirijn de Lang, Lucie Chartin, Martijn Sanders, Martine Prins, dir: Serge van Veggel, cond:Hernan Schvartzman, New European Ensemble; OPERA2DAY at the Koninklijke Schouwburg, The Hague Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 30 2018 Star rating: 4.0Ambroise Thomas' Shakespearean opera stripped back to its highly expressive bones Jean-Baptise Faure as Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet in 1877 by Edouard Manet Ambroise Thomas' 1868 opera Hamlet takes Shakespeare's play and filters it through multiple layers of influences. The libretto is based not directly on Shakespeare but on Alexandre Dumas, père and Paul Meurice's French version of the play (which included a number of changes and 'corrections'), and then the libretto itself re-shapes the material further to create […]
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