Mavra/Pierrot Lunaire - Britten Sinfonia

Mavra/Pierrot Lunaire

Charleston
12 – 22 May 2022

Stravinsky

Mavra

Schoenberg

Pierrot Lunaire

Summary

As part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists alongside Britten Sinfonia present a mixed programme in the Linbury Theatre, bringing together Igor Stravinsky’s rarely performed Mavra, 100 years after its 1922 premiere, and Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 melodrama Pierrot Lunaire.

Stravinsky’s one-act opera is based on a narrative poem by Pushkin, in which a Hussar disguises himself as a cook in an attempt to spend more time with his lover.

Schoenberg’s formally wide-ranging, atonal score for Pierrot Lunaire, pre-dating the 12-tone technique for which he is celebrated, transforms into Sprechstimme the texts of poems by Albert Giraud on subjects ranging from love, sex and religion to violence, crime and blasphemy.