When the Flame Dies (2013)
SHOP
Catalogue No: MSV 77203
EAN/UPC: 809730720390
Artists: Andrew Radley, Carlos del Cueto, Edward Grint, Emily Phillips, Julian Podger, Lucy Williams, New Music Players
Composers: Ed Hughes
Release Date: November 2013
Genres: Opera/Operetta, Staged
Periods: Contemporary
Discs: 1
Total Playing Time: 57:24
Brilliant, energetic music. Pierre Rigaudière
A new opera, with libretto by Roger Morris based on the Orpheus legend, a main character alluding to Jean Cocteau, by British composer Ed Hughes. A stunning work in one Act, it is presented here in both audio CD and a DVD of the concert performance recording. The DVD also contains a short film by Sheryl Jenkins “‘The Symptoms of his Madness were as Follows”.
DVD: dual sided, PAL & NTSC compatible, region 0 (universal play)
A fine performance by top British soloists, New Music Players, conducted by Carlos del Cueto.
The soloists are:
EDWARD GRINT baritone (Poet)
LUCY WILLIAMS mezzo-soprano (Princess Death)
JULIAN PODGER tenor (Orpheus)
EMILY PHILIPS soprano (Eurydice)
ANDREW RADLEY counter-tenor (Raymond)
DVD: dual sided, PAL & NTSC compatible, region 0 (universal play)
Ed Hughes:
When the Flame Dies - Can’t write (2:09)
When the Flame Dies - My love is dead (2:04)
When the Flame Dies - If only… (4:16)
When the Flame Dies - Before you pull the trigger (3:10)
When the Flame Dies - Eternal Orpheus (3:46)
When the Flame Dies - Interlude I (1:41)
When the Flame Dies - I am Orpheus (3:44)
When the Flame Dies - I am forever the singer (4:34)
When the Flame Dies - You wanted her dead! (3:36)
When the Flame Dies - Interlude 2 - I am the killer (3:43)
When the Flame Dies - Our perfect hours (3:49)
When the Flame Dies - Aren't you going to answer it? (5:50)
When the Flame Dies - There are no memories (2:19)
When the Flame Dies - The rising of the sap (6:12)
When the Flame Dies - Killer in the poet's mask (1:48)
When the Flame Dies - The candle is burnt out (5:50)
Gramophone
Beware: this opera may take you hostage with its ability to get under your skin. As with any good opera, this one convincingly creates its own logic. Roger Morris’s libretto gains much of its entrancing quality through the leeway of ambiguity. The 12-member ensemble reveals much effective compositional strategy … and just plain alchemy. The question is not if you like it but if you can tear yourself away from it.
David Patrick Stearns
L'avant-Scène Opéra (France)
The device with video and light projections is the best possible approach to this beautiful piece. Brilliant, energetic music, whose most immediately noticeable quality is its clarity… the language is open and attractive, very harmonically inventive. Five young singers, all excellent … an instrumental ensemble very precise and directed with great attention and we have here all the ingredients for a production of high standing.
Pierre Rigaudière (translation: Stephen Sutton)
Forum Opera (France)
It is the exciting orchestral treatment which wins through in this short chamber opera, with the shimmering timbres of the twelve instrumentalists of New Music Players, often bolstered by electronics. Edward Grint, recently seen at the Musée d’Orsay in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, proves very comfortable in the main role, while Lucy Williams [as Princess Death] leads the game with authority. Andrew Radley, as Raymond Radiquet, gives a good performance and is rewarded with a long soliloquy near the end of the work.
Laurent Bury (translation by Stephen Sutton)
Tempo
Hughes’s music fizzes with invention
Leo Chadburn.