George Benjamin music
Martin Crimp libretto
Katie Mitchell stage director
George Benjamin conductor
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
CAST: Stéphane Degout – King; Gyula Orendt – Gaveston/Stranger; Peter Hoare – Mortimer; Samuel Boden – Boy/Young King; Jennifer France – Witness 1/Singer 1/Woman 1; Krisztina Szabó – Witness 2/Singer 2/Woman 2; Andri Björn Róbertsson – Witness 3/Madman
with Barbara Hannigan as Queen Isabel
Label: Opus Arte – OABD7199D
BluRay + DVD
Filmed live in HD at Covent Garden
Intl. release: 28 December 2018
Awards
Nominee: Grammy Award 2020, Best Opera Recording
Nominee: Gramophone Award 2019, Contemporary
Buy & Stream
REVIEWS
“George Benjamin and Martin Crimp have done it again. Six years after their previous operatic collaboration, the masterly Written on Skin, Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Crimp have again dared to challenge audiences by remaining true to their uncompromising visions. In Lessons in Love and Violence, (…) the music, written and compellingly conducted by Mr. Benjamin, is unapologetically modernist, while the libretto, by Mr. Crimp, is often cryptic. Without pandering, they’ve made another significant contribution to the art form.”
“In the queen, Mr. Benjamin has created another remarkable role for Ms. Hannigan’s immense vocal gifts and comprehensive musicianship. He writes lines that shift from earthy emotionalism to angelic purity, knowing that this artist can handle those pivots. He takes advantage of her focused intonation and rhythmic precision to lend even anguished passages structural strength.”
– The New York Times
“His [George Benjamin’s] music, like Crimp’s words, is at once brilliantly clear and full of half-suggested meanings. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande lurks in the background, a benign influence casting rays of light into this world of moral darkness. Although Benjamin does not write conventional arias, it seems there is barely a line that this cast does not shape with beauty and expressiveness.”
– The Financial Times
“…soaring horn lines, long, self-renewing melodic strands, pungent punctuations from cimbalom and wooden percussion. That is matched in some of Benjamin’s vocal writing, especially Isabel’s spiralling melismas, tailor-made for Barbara Hannigan’s extraordinary agility”
– The Guardian