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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A strange, incessantly tense chamber opera, January 7, 2004
This Kairos disc is one of three devoted to the music of Salvatore Sciarrino. Unlike the other discs, this one contains just one work: the two act chamber opera Luci mie traditrici. This work was based on Giacinto Cicogini's document of the composer Carlo Gesualdo's murder of his unfaithful, neglected wife and her lover. (Gesualdo himself remained above the law, his position in society preventing him from punishment.) Sciarrino's opera, however, does not explicitly refer to Gesualdo: after hearing that Schnittke was working on an opera on the same subject, he remove names from the character and replaced the reinstrumentations of Gesualdo that he had prepared for the opera with reinstrumentations of music by Claude Le Jeune. (The Gesualdo arrangements are now included in Le voci sottovetro, on one of the other Kairos discs.)The opera starts with an unaccompanied vocal prologue, before the Duke and Duchess sing tense lines about love (watched, offstage, by a jealous servant). The Duke leaves, and a guest arrives: the guest and Duchess declare their love, overheard by the eavesdropping servant, who tells the Duke. He curses the servant for telling him, declaring that he must restore his honour now that he knows. In the second act, the Duke enquires of the Duchess' love. Gradually his remarks become stranger, until they meet in the bedchamber, where he reveals the guest's murdered body in the bed. The opera closes with the Duke stabbing his wife to death. This rather shabby story is counterpointed by some extraordinary writing for the singers and accompanying ensemble (of two flutes, clarinet doubling bass clarinets, two bassoons, two saxes, two trumpets, two trombones, four violins, two violas, cello, double bass and two percussionists). Much of the music develops from high tremolandi, overblown flute sounds, brief interruptions from the bass and tense, wailing vocals that reverse more traditional word-setting habits by placing long held notes before torrents of filigree. The music is incessantly nervous, with only the interludes breaking the atmosphere. I've tried multiple times with this opera, but unlike with many of Sciarrino's works I can find little to enjoy in it. The music is too obssessively tense, claustrophobic and one-dimensional for my taste, and I found that after a while it started to grate on me. Others may enjoy this disc more than I did, but I'd rather spend my time with any one of half a dozen other Sciarrino recordings.
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