Our August newsletter is out
today and explores thoughts on our 2010 production – Haydn’s L’anima del
filosofo.
At Pinchgut we choose works
that are not well known but should be. There are many reasons that work may
have been left off the performing circuit during the decades & centuries,
usually for no fault of their own. And often time for no good reason at all. Our
artistic team, Erin Helyard, Antony Walker & Alison Johnston, finds these
gems (and there are many), then we debate their relative merits and our
circumstances before deciding which one to present. Of course, we would love to
present more than just one a year…
L’anima del filosofo is a
work that has never been performed in Australia before. Haydn’s orchestral
works and quartets, including Creation and The Seasons, have had many
performances, but not so the operas. Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon believed
that L’anima del filosofo contains some of Haydn’s grandest thoughts and within
the framework of an artform that in Haydn’s lifetime was dying - opera seria - he
managed to pen a most beautiful farewell to this ancient and venerated genre.
Robbins Landon even went so far as to say that “in fact, there are many moments
in Orpheus which are quite above and apart from any other music Haydn ever
composed.” We believe it has been unjustly overlooked and deserves to be heard.
Read more in today’s newsletter here…
Anna
