Georg Friedrich Haas’s 2009 work, sung with authority by Claire Booth, describes the unstable trajectory of the poet’s relationship with a younger woman
In November, the Royal Opera stages the world premiere of Morning and Evening, a new work by the 61-year-old Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas. By way of a taster, this Linbury programme brings together two of Haas’s earlier works, linked in a production designed and directed by Netia Jones.
Atthis is mentioned in the poems of Sappho as a love-object. Haas’s 2009 song-cycle – here sung and spoken with shining authority by the soprano Claire Booth, stationed on a ledge at the midpoint of the lunar disc that forms Jones’s set – sews Sapphic fragments together in an account of a relationship between the poet and the younger woman that begins with its dissolution and travels backwards in time to its inception. The text is alternately in ancient Greek and German, though Jones’s atmospheric video designs also incorporate Ruth Padel’s English translation alongside diverse imagery including water, frost, plants and glass shattering.
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