Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Krause: Armenian Requiem; Ellison: Say I Am You

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The Great War of 1914-18 ended with an Armistice on November 11th. In Europe, Armistice Day is one of solemn commemoration for the war dead. (In only relatively recent times did Americans come to call it Veterans' Day.) The Armenian Requiem by American composer Ian Krause (b. 1956) was written to mark the centenary of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Armenia is an Orthodox country; there is no tradition there of a standard Latin Requiem Aeternam, as there is in Western Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, Krause constructed this commemorative work employing elements reminiscent of a Mass for the Dead with Armenian liturgical elements and settings of verse by Armenian poets (eg. the Prelude, "I Want To Die Singing" by Siamanto) and the folk melodies of Komitas. The overall effect is like that of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem (1960).

Royce Hall in Los Angeles is a splendid venue in which to record a large scale sacred composition. It was there that the world premiere recording of the Armenian Requiem was made in 2015 for release in 2019 through the Naxos label on two compact discs in the "American Classics" series. The performing resources required were considerable: the UCLA Philharmonic, the Lark Master Singers chorus, the Tatzian Children's Choir, the VEM String Quartet, four vocal soloists, and a duduk player (the duduk being a Middle Eastern reed instrument). Neal Stulberg leads the entire musical assemblage.

There's time remaining this afternoon for another contemporary lyric theater piece inspired by the musical culture of the Levant. British composer Michael Ellison has drawn upon the musical traditions of Turkey for his first opera, Say I Am You (2012). Ellison prepared his own libretto in English, based upon the poetry of the 13th century Persian mystic Rumi. Say I Am You tells the story of how a wandering dervish transformed Jelaluddin Rumi (also called Mevlana) from an ordinary Islamic scholar into the legendary ecstatic poet.

The opera had its world premiere at the 40th Istanbul Music Festival in cooperation with the Rotterdam Operadagen of the Netherlands. Say I Am You was composed especially for the voices of the Vocallab and the Hezarfen Ensemble of instrumentalists, who play both standard Western and Turkish folk instruments. Lucas Vis directs the singers and players. The recording was released in 2013 on a single silver disc from Metier of the Divine Art Ltd. recording group.