Word: egk
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...current St. Paul season ranges from a Carmen in French to a Siegfried in English. Last week the company offered the American premiere of Engagement in San Domingo by Germany's Werner Egk, 73, whose music tends to be grandiose and wildly varied. Engagement is a kind of Caribbean Aida set in what is now Haiti during the black natives' overthrow of the French colonists at the turn of the 19th century. The heroine is the mulatto Jeanne, who falls in love with the French officer Christoph, though her revolutionist mother Bobokan is plotting his death...
...story is a natural for opera, set by the composer in a style that can only be called Egk-clectic. The blues, dashes of Strauss and Puccini, an occasional roll of voodoo drums-all these are woven into a skillful pastiche. If hardly innovative, it is easy to listen to and, at key moments, appropriately bravura. Never mind such questions as why Egk chose the blues to evoke a Caribbean mood, instead of a music more indigenous to the West Indies. Music Director Igor Buketoff led a crisp, idiomatic performance that drew the most from Egk's acrobatic orchestral...
...music (an opera by Prokofiev, piano works by Debussy and Ravel), but the score card was overwhelmingly modern: a sampling of contemporary Italian music played by the Milan Radio Orchestra, a concert of atonal chamber works by France's Parrenin Quartet, an opera by Germany's Werner Egk. The tone of the festival reflected Tito's promise of a free hand, but Chief Organizer Milko Keleman, 37, an instructor in composition at Zagreb Conservatory, was understandably anxious when Cultural Relations Commissar Drago Vucinic showed up for a concert of electronic works played by the Cologne Ensemble...
Much of the attention in contemporary opera is drawn by U.S., English or German composers: Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Hans Werner Henze, Werner Egk. But Italy, opera's birthplace, still produces an impressive share of the breed -some 500 new operas a year. Each year the best of the current Italian operatic product goes on display at a remarkable opera festival-the Teatro delle Novita, winding up its 17th season in the Alpine hill town of Bergamo, and known as the "gateway to La Scala...
This exchange, accompanied by a long-winded, brassy orchestra with lots of percussion and no fiddles, was sung last week on a Berlin stage. Abstract Opera No. 1 was the work of two leading German composer-librettists, Boris Blacher. (Romeo and Juliet, Prussian Fairytale) and Werner Egk (Columbus, Irish Legend). The work was produced with deadpan literalness and conducted by Hermann Scherchen, one of Europe's famed conductors. Nobody in the audience shouted "Shoot the composer!" or "Hang the conductor!" In fact, to Composer Blacher's amazement, a capacity crowd received the work cordially, demanding many curtain calls...