Friday 5 December 2014

Today : world première of 'A Christmas Carol' by Iain Bell in Houston


Today, the new chamber opera composed by Iain Bell, A Christmas Carol, with a libretto by Simon Callow after Charles Dickens, will be performed in Houston.


The libretto is in fact based on the one-man version Dickens himself prepared for public readings and performed more than a 100 times.
Near the end of the workday on Christmas Eve, Scrooge, a penurious businessman, grudgingly gives his clerk Bob Cratchit the next day off for the holiday. When Scrooge returns home, he is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who died on Christmas Eve seven years previously. Marley wears a long, heavy chain and warns Scrooge that he faces the same fate unless he mends his selfish ways. Marley warns that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits. Scrooge is visited in turn by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come. At the end of the final visit, Scrooge implores the spirit to reverse his fate, promising to be a new man. (reproduced from Houston Grand Opera website)
The tenor Jay Hunter Morris will be the Narrator, accompanied by a 15-player chamber orchestra. Warren Jones conducts and Simon Callow directs. The opera will be performed at the Cullen Theater in the Wortham Theater Center.
It is Bell's second opera. His first, A Harlot's Progress, based on William Hogarth's engravings, was first performed in Vienna in October 2013.

No comments:

Post a Comment