|
|
DiscountDelight - Osvaldo Golijov: Ainadamar
|
List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $12.94
Your Save: $ 5.04 ( 28% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
|
Average Customer Rating: 
|
|
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028947761655
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
Release Date: 2006-05-09
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great Ibero- American opera
Comment: Golijov has been experimenting for several years now with the synthesis of ouvertly Ibero-American genres and contemporary music textures. This work is his most successful so far in this vein, in my opinion, given that the compositional choices express the content of the libretto with conviction and without incongruences. The work can be described as a secular passion play, not only by its structure as a set of three ritualized remembrance vignettes in which the actress Margarita Xirgu is both a narrator and actor; but also due to its exploration of the sacrifice of Lorca to fascism; the personal anguish of Margarita's existential choices; and Lorca's posthumous iconic stature as the inspiration of countless musical and theatrical works by artists from all over the world. These topics address eternal concerns about heroic clashes between the artist and society, and between freedom and tyranny. Theater director Peter Sellars emphasized these references to Jesus' passion in his staging.
The musical plan develops like a Handelian or Mozartian opera, with clean-cut alternations between recitatives, arias and choruses, all of which adopt genres from Spain and Latin America with rather specific rhetorical connotations. It is not unlike the processes of assimilation of sicilianas, turkish marches, sarabandes, waltzes, polonaises and other such dances into what we know as European Classical music. The work eschews the Wagnerian model of an endless melody. Instead, the listener is carried forward by the constant gratification of individual gems of sensuous music. Golijov is a masterful orchestrator of haunting textures. The singers get to sound fantastic in gorgeous melodies.
Golijov is not the first to attempt these syntheses, but he is doing it today in a very favorable critical environment in the United States, with unquestionable technical virtuosity and genuine beauty. Although controversies arise about pandering to the audience and so on, it is all perhaps a matter of context. This opera will last.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stunning operatic performance and composition
Comment: I heard a review of this opera on NPR and was hooked. I bought it completely on a whim. I'm thrilled with what I got. Golijov blends several different musical tradtions to create stunning new music. Hwang's libretto beautfully illustrates the characters' passion. The opera is about an actress who worked with Spanish playwright Federico Lorca before his death at the hands of the facsist party. The opera illustrates how she made peace with her actions since his death. A beautiful story that will hopefully remind us how important freedoms of pen and speech really are.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Hottest thing in Classical Music Right Now
Comment: This piece of music is simply magical. Like all of Golijov's works, it plays on Jewish and Arabic idioms, seamlessly intertwining them with flamenco.
Directed by Peter Sellars, with a libretto by David Hwang and conducted by Robert Spano, this is the hottest CD in classical music right now. Dawn Upshaw is magnificent, and all of the singing, much like Golijov's other works, is operatic but is very folk-oriented and modern.
A must buy!
Customer Rating:
Summary: BEST OPERA IN YEARS!
Comment: I've heard a little of this young Argentine's music in the past, but nothing to prepare me for this. This is truly extraordinary. Incredibly beautiful modern but tonal music. Listen to the Aria to the Statue of Mary on the 5th band; I don't think Mozart ever wrote an aria lovelier than this. I don't understand why this is receiving so little attention (so far).
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
This unique, 80-minute opera must be heard. The title means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic and refers to the place in Granada where Federico Garcia Lorca was executed by Fascist soldiers in 1936. The work opens in a theater in Uruguay in 1969. As the actress Margarita Xirgu, who collaborated with Lorca in the 1920s and '30s, is about to go on stage, she recalls memories of him and his death and the survivor's guilt she feels. Musical images take us back as well. The sounds of hoofbeats, a fountain, and gun shots punctuate the otherwise beautiful, tonal, highly Spanish-influenced score, filled with flamenco and rumba rhythms. The vocal lines are all highly singable as well as dramatic. The work is mostly scored for women's voices: Margartita, sung by Dawn Upshaw; Lorca himself, sung by Kelley O'Connor; Nuria, Margarita's student, sung by Jessica Rivera. There is also an ensemble of women's voices that do most of the work. Margarita dies just before going onstage. The trio for her, Nuria, and Lorca is about as beautiful as anything you'll ever hear. "What a sad day it was in Granada / The stones began to cry" is a refrain that recurs throughout the opera, and the whole piece is sheer poetry. This is stunning. --Robert Levine
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
