Scott Wheeler: Naga (Opera In Two Acts)
Soloists; White Snake Projects Orchestra; Carolyn Kuan
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Soloists; White Snake Projects Orchestra; Carolyn Kuan
Description
Fairy tale opera has been a challenging genre for composers, with even some of the musically most successful examples, like Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel of 1893, more often presented for children than for adults.
Scott Wheeler's (b.1952) ' Naga', working from a text that lies between fairy tale and mythology, stands much closer to Mozart's marvellous exemplar, The Magic Flute, in its musical account of a restless man setting out on a spiritual quest in a world polarized between good and evil forces that are not easily distinguishable one from another.
Set to a libretto by Singapore-born writer and impresario Cerise Lim Jacobs, the opera follows a Buddhist monk as he leaves his wife and sets off in search of spiritual enlightenment, under the tutelage of a stern Buddhist master and the surveillance of two fiercely passionate snakes, the "naga" of the title, designating Hindu and Buddhist serpentine deities.
Given the religious content and fairy tale legendry of the libretto, it is striking that Wheeler's Naga is neither ritually minimalist in its musical composition, nor carefully neo-classical, but a work of full-blooded passion, longing, and jealousy, gorgeously composed in the spirit of late Romantic opera. Wheeler, a student of Virgil Thomson, reflects
some of the musical values of mid-twentieth-century composers like Barber, Britten, and Bernstein.
Featuring soloists Anthony Roth Costanzo, David Salsbery Fry, Stacey Tappan, Matthew Worth and Sandra Piques Eddy, they are accompanied by the White Snake Projects Orchestra, conducted by Carolyn Kuan.
Tracklisting
Sarah Hennies
Ostrava New Orchestra, Owen Underhill, Ostravska Banda, Petr Kotik, Elision Ensemble, Arditti Quartet, Switch~ Ensemble, Jason Thorpe Buchanan
James Martin, Lynn Raley
Peter Gena
New World
New World
Mivos Quartet
Twilight String Orchestra; Fahad Siadat
Thomas Sanderling, Orchester des Nationaltheaters Mannheim
Malcolm Sargent, Mary Lewis, Tudor Davies, Maggie Teyte, Clive Carey, Marie Howes, Harry Plunket Greene, James Johnstone
Maria Callas
Soloists; Eroica Berlin; Jakob Lehmann
Luigi De Donato; Collegium 1704; Vaclav Luks
Anna Moffo; Cesare Valletti; Fernando Corena; Erich Leinsdorf
Soloists; Orchestre classique de Montreal; Alain Trudel
Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi, Natalia Rubis, Pawel Konik, Krzysztof Baczyk, Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir