Opera no 122
Soloists
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Gill Rose
This marks a change of direction in this project. I’ve crossed the Atlantic to explore some American operas. This is a repertoire which I know nothing about other than the works of Leonard Bernstein and most , marvellous as they are, can’t easily be categorised as operas.
I start with Samuel Barber. I don’t know much of his music and his first symphony didn’t make much of an impression on me when I listened to if for last year’s project. I think that I would have to say the same about this opera. It is very much in a late-romantic European trading with very little, at least to my ears, to mark it out as American. I suspect that Barber was deliberately setting out to write a piece that could enter the mainstream without any special pleading. Much of it seemed to me to be rather bland, particularly the more dramatic moments, which did at times seem like film music. Nothing wrong with film music, of course, but I didn’t feel that Barber had a distinctive enough voice. The quieter more lyrical music came off better, with some really rather touching moments, but overall this was not an opera that convinced me that it should be part of the international repertoire.
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