Editorial Mondigromax

Lord Byron. Un estiu sense estiu

Lord Byron. Un estiu sense estiu                        Lord Byron. A summer without summer

Agustí Charles

Bazaar-Cassandra

LByron. Un estiu sense estiu

Chamber opera in two acts

Composition Agustí Charles
Libretto Marc Rosich
Year of composition 2009 -2010
Duration approx. 2 hours and 45 minutes, with one intermission
Language Catalan with overtitles

In Darmstadt, with the Staatsorchester Darmstadt and the Chorus of the Staatstheater
In Barcelona,  with the Orquestra BCN 216 and the Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu

Commission: Staatstheater Darmstadt (Germany)

Co-production: Staatstheater Darmstadt, Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatros del Canal

World premiere: March 12, 2011, at Staatstheater Darmstadt (Germany), with a total of nine performances until May 2011.

 

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability.
Percy B. Shelly, from “Mutability”

 

The libretto of Marc Rosich sets the action of the opera in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. At the same time as this event, the volcano Tambora became active in the Pacific Ocean and from it a toxic cloud of ash erupted which crossed the entire planet upsetting the natural seasonal order. The cloud reached Geneva in the summer of 1816 bringing with it alarming storms, and so trapping a curious group of exiles in their summer villas, the group including Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, his lover Mary, her step-sister Claire Clairmont, and Doctor Polidori. The fruit of this encounter in the middle of the “summer without summer” was two of the most important texts of Gothic literature,  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley and The Vampire by J.W. Polidori.

 

Score LByron 567 pages. Editorial Mondigromax

Lord Byron. Un estiu sense estiu

June 25, 27 and 28, 2011
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona

March 12 until May, 2011
World premiere. Nine performances 
Staatstheater Darmstadt, Germany

 

Music
Agustí Charles

Libretto
Marc Rossich

Conductor
Martin Lukas Meister

Stage director
Alfonso Romero Mora

Set design & light design
Dirk Becker

Costume design
Gabriela Salaverri

Conductor of chorus Staatstheater Darmstadt
André Weiss

Conductor of chorus Gran Teatre del Liceu
José Luís Basso

Cast

Lord Byron
Gerson Sales

John William Polidori
Malte Godglück

Percy B. Shelley
Norbert Schmittberg

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Muriel Schwarz

Claire Clairmont
Margaret Rose Koenn

William Fletcher
Lasse Penttinen

Press Quotes

Lord Byron and the Catalan pride
Nothing could have filled Catalan pride more today than hearing their language in a German theater used by magnificent voices. Agustí Charles, for his part, makes one hundred percent use of the text and composes complex lines relying profusely on the chorus, which he uses to recreate the sounds of telluric forces. March 14, 2011, La Vanguardia

The Seven Deaths of Romance
What is striking about the first full-length opera by Agustí Charles is the orientation towards the historical given while at the same time being up to date… the questions raised here continue to probe after the curtain has fallen. And that is one of the best things that can be said of a work of art. March 15, 2011, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, FAZ


Hypnotic chill
The dark side of gothic romance, which Byron and his literary friends explored in their summer workshop, determines the keynote of this music, which, despite its rejection of any operatic convention, develops an almost hypnotic power….

The production gives a face to the “lament of the earth” conjured up in the libretto. Alfonso Romero Mora sets large pictures… May 2011, Opernwelt

A Catalan Lord Byron in Germany
…an opera that received on Saturday night, with 10 minutes of applause… the approval of the public of what was, after World War II, the capital of the musical avant-garde.

Charles writes for this opera a dense orchestral score, of which the elaborate timbral work stands out…  March 14, 2011, El País

Lord Byron
Lord Byron. Agustí Charles
Lord Byron. Agustí Charles
Lord Byron. Agustí Charles
Lord Byron. Agustí Charles

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