Opernhaus Zürich has announced its programme for its 24/25 season, including the world premiere of Jonathan Dove and librettist Peter Lund’s new opera In 80 Tagen um die Welt (Around the World in 80 Days) based on the novel by Jules Verne. The piece is written for children from age 7 and up and the eternally young, with the story adapted to follow the young Max, who loves to read and who gets spirited away to far-off lands.
Opening on 17 November 2024 and directed by Michael Richter, the production runs for 14 performances until 14 January 2025. Tickets are available from the Opernhaus Zürich website The world premiere of Odyssey, a powerful new music-drama for singers and orchestra composed by Jonathan Dove.
Drawing on first-hand accounts, this dramatically engaging story in song allows the audience to see through the eyes of one refugee on a perilous journey to seek safety in another country. As vivid snapshots of a peaceful home life turn to visceral images of unrest, together we travel through strange landscapes and across borders, and discover the courage it takes to leave loved ones and take desperate risks in order to survive. Odyssey, a 50’ work for soloists, choir, and orchestra by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton premieres at Bristol Beacon on 28 January 2024. The work celebrates and documents the courage of those who make the perilous journey, and the complex fortunes of those who manage to make a life in a new country, yet always long for home. With the storytelling shared between adult chorus, children’s chorus, community chorus and soprano and tenor soloists, with symphony orchestra Odyssey has been written in such a way that it may be fully or partially staged. The first performance with the City of Bristol Choir, along with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is conducted by David Ogden and was co-commissioned by them and the Bristol Music Trust who helped develop the piece, by organising workshops in which librettist Alasdair Middleton and Jonathan Dove met refugees currently living in Bristol. The community choirs Bristol Youth Choir and Bristol Windrush Reggae Choir join the performers along with Francesca Chiejina, Soprano and Thando Mjandana, Tenor. See more information on the Bristol Beacon website Jonathan Dove's In Exile premieres at the George Enescu Festival on 3 September, followed by a performance in Bucharest on 5 September. The piece will be performed by cellist Raphael Wallfisch and baritone Simon Keenlyside with the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Bacău, conducted by Jessica Cottis.
Scored for solo baritone, solo cello and orchestra, In Exile moves through a day in the life of an involuntary exile: waking alone in a foreign land; remembering the moment of banishment, the moment of departure, the voyage; remembering the homeland. The Exile feels the pain of being so far away in his country’s time of need, unable to help his own people. He remembers all the names he has been called in this strange land. He thinks of all he has lost, and longs for home. The spine of Alasdair Middleton’s libretto is from a 10th Century manuscript, The Wayfarer, by an anonymous old English author. Voices from across the ages flesh out a composite portrait: a single line of Shakespeare recurs among lyrical verses by Dante, Emily Lawless, Kahlil Gibran, Kaveh Bassiri and Douglas Hyde. The theme of exile was suggested by the history of the Wallfisch family, and is dedicated to Raphael’s mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who has told her story in her book Inherit the Truth 1939-1945: The Documented Experiences of a Survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen. In Exile fuses elements of operatic scena and concerto, the two soloists expressing complementary aspects of the same character. The solo cello is the alter ego of the baritone, ranging above and below his voice, able to take his song down into the depths and up into the heights. Sometimes the soloists hand over to each other, complete each other’s sentences, so to speak; sometimes they duet and counterpoint. VOCES8 perform Dove's The Passing of the Year as part of their 'LIVE from London' online concert series on 13 February. Presenting music rooted in nature – from extravagant Elizabethan idylls styled for queen ‘Oriana’, to Alec Roth’s rapt and soaring Stargazer and Kate Rusby’s Underneath the Stars, the programme title mirrors that of Jonathan Dove’s superb song cycle The Passing of the Year which evokes the beauty and mystic power of the changing seasons, describing the triumph of nature’s perpetual cycle. Jonathan himself will accompany VOCES8 on the piano.
Visit the LIVE from London for more information. Jonathan Dove's new work for the BBC Symphony Chorus, We Are One Fire, premieres on 19 August 2019 at the Royal Albert Hall. Opening Prom 43 (which also includes Dieter Ammann's Piano Concerto Beethoven's Ninth Symphony) We Are One Fire features a new text written by long-time collaborator Alasdair Middleton and is a festive 90th birthday present for the BBC Symphony Chorus, who have regularly given splendid performances of Dove's music at the Proms.
“All men become brothers”, says Schiller in his Ode to Joy, and knowing that these words would be sung in the second half of the concert, Dove found himself reflecting that twentieth-century archaeology showed us that we are all indeed brothers and sisters. Expressed in A History of the World in One Hundred Objects, its author, Neil MacGregor, explains that archaeologist Louis Leakey’s 1931 excavations “produced the oldest known humanly made things anywhere in the world at that time, and they demonstrated that not only human beings but also human culture had begun in Africa… [they] did more than push humans back in time: they made it clear that all of us descend from those African ancestors, that every one of us is part of a huge African diaspora – we all have Africa in our DNA and all our culture began there.” MacGregor quotes Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai: “The information we have tells us that we came from somewhere in eastern Africa. Because we are so used to being divided along ethnic lines, along racial lines, and we look all the time for reasons to be different from each other, it must be surprising to some of us to realize that what differentiates us is usually very superficial, like the colour of our skin or the colour of our eyes or the texture of our hair, but that essentially we are all from the same stem, the same origin.” Wanting to celebrate this shared ancestry, Dove searched for suitable words to express these thoughts in song. But these are relatively recent ideas, still evolving, and hard to find in lyric form, so Dove asked Alasdair Middleton to write a new text specially for this commission. Dove already had an idea of the kind of choral music he wanted to write: something joyous and tribal, but not using (or copying) any traditional music from another country. Prom 43 takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 August 2019 at 7.30pm. |