SKU: HL.14015279

ISBN 9780711995796.

This new Opera was first performed in 1998 in Huddersfield by Opera North. Designed for the modern stage, it utilises only a small cast and orchestra - albeit one with a good variety of percussion! The libretto is adapted by the composer from the play 'The Love of Don Pemperlin for Belisa in the Garden' by Feredico Garcia Lorca, translated into English by David Johnston. The plot revolves around the ill-fated marriage of Don Pemperlin, an ageing bachelor and his beautiful neighbour Belisa, which was suggested by Pemperlin's maid. Tricks and misunderstandings abound and because of them, Pemperlin ends by stabbing himself and dying even as Belisa proclaims her love for him.

SKU: HL.14006376

ISBN 9781844495023. 9.25x11.75x1.36 inches.

Opera in three acts, edited by Alan Curtis. This opera was first performed in Venice in 1666. It may with justice be considered to be the finest opera written between Monteverdi's 'Poppea' and the dramatic works of the mature Purcell. Having in 1983 presided over the first modern revival of 'Il Tito' in Innsbruck, the city of its original commissioning, Alan Curtis has now produced the first complete performing edition to be drawn from available sources.

SKU: BT.MUSM570362127

English.

Luis Tinoco (Composer) and Stephen Plaice (Libretto) wrote 'Paint Me', and Opera for six singers and Chamber Orchestra. Rui Horta and Joana Carneiro are responsible for the stage direction and the musical direction. My idea in writing Paint Me was to bring together six characters, all of whom have a prolific imaginative interior life, and to explore what they would make of each other in the confines of a railway compartment. The model for my libretto is Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The travellers in Paint Me are also on their way to Canterbury, but they are strangers thrown together by the randomness of modern travel. Their tales are not told publicly, but in theirown imaginations. Most journeys in the modern age are anonymous and conducted in silence. We have only a visual or perhaps manneristic impression of the people sitting opposite us. This introspection in public opens up a private fantasy space, in which our fellow travellers can become the characters in instant psychological dramatisations.I wanted to formalize each character’s fantasy into a full narrative. The result is a kind of anthology of operatic short stories, surrounded by the framework of an ordinary journey.     - Stephen Plaice.