Janos Gereben <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Lou Harrison's 1954 opera, "Rapunzel," is scheduled for a fully-staged
>(how high the tower?) performance at this summer's Cabrillo Music Festival,
>in Santa Cruz, the dark state of California.  The six-act (yes) work will
>return to the festival, always a bastion of "new music," which staged the
>West Coast premiere in 1966. ...

>One of his largest serial works, "Rapunzel" was part of Harrison's
>self-therapy work (as he told his biographer) at Black Mountain College,
>following his breakdown in the early 'Fifties.  He used William Morris'
>libretto because of its poetry, psychological complexity, and the way in
>which it mirrored some of the problems he was struggling with in that
>period.

It's hard not to see one of the problems big Lou was dealing with at the
time as being this score:  available on New Albion NA 093 CD, Rapunzel is
a short (less than 1hr), oddly unmemorable piece for this composer; & has
a yawning gap between academic style & narrative content which occasionally
foreshadows The Barber of Darmstadt by Humphrey Searle's Teutonic
Hoffnomusicologist, Bruno Heinz Jaja.  Even allowing for the local history,
it seems a strange choice for a revival...  is this performance a composer
request?

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>
endeavour2 project <http://www.geocities.com/robtclements/endeavour2.html>