Rorem: Miss Julie
Ned Rorem’s 2nd symphony didn’t make much of an impression on me when I included it in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Rorem and I am afraid to say that I felt the same about this opera. There was nothing I disliked - but the whole thing did seem rather inconsequential. It is written in a broadly tonal idiom but with some echoes of Berg and perhaps a few touches of Britten. Rorem was predominantly a song writer and that was clear the the more lyrical parts of the opera where there was some attractive passages, not least the end, which I found rather haunting. Burt overall this was not a peice that I would want to go back to again.
This is the end of this little series of American operas. Perhaps ironically the one I enjoyed most was Four Saints in Three Acts which is so far out on a limb from any of the other traditions of American operas I have explored here. These half a dozen or so works to I think show how composers of the 20th century struggled to create something which was at the same time distinctly American and yet at the same time was worthy of a place in the European operatic tradition. It has been interesting hearing the different approaches that they took.
For the next part of the project I am returning to a group of works which are in a genre which is much more familiar to me - 19th and early 20th century French opera.
