“I set these raunchy and vivid song lyrics to my own music,” Adams says. “Sung by the male chorus, they provide much of the gusto in the opera, sometimes effervescent, and at other times genuinely disturbing in a way that was brought home to me five years later when I watched on television the fury of the January 6th Capitol attack in Washington.”
Featured Artists:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
John Adams, conductor
Libretto compiled from original sources by Peter Sellars
Julia Bullock, Dame Shirley (soprano)
Davóne Tines, Ned Peters (bass-baritone)
Paul Appleby, Joe Cannon (tenor)
Hye Jung Lee, Ah Sing (soprano)
Elliot Madore, Ramón (baritone)
Daniela Mack, Josefa Segovia (mezzo-soprano)
Ryan McKinny, Clarence King (bass-baritone)
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon, Artistic Director
Jenny Wong, Associate Artistic Director
About the Composer:
As a young composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) followed in the tradition of his idol Tchaikovsky, adding to his composing skills a phenomenal prowess as a pianist and great gifts as a conductor. As the new century developed around him, his music stubbornly retained many of the characteristics of his idol, but always with the unmistakably personal stamp of its creator. For many years Rachmaninoff was better known as a piano virtuoso, but his compositions have come to be acknowledged as supreme masterworks of the Russian school.