Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Gatto: Wise Blood; Josquin des Prez: Motets For the first Sunday in Lent

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

For the first Sunday in Lent I present a twenty-first century American opera that turns Southern Evangelical Protestantism on its head. Anthony Gatto's Wise Blood (2020) is based on Flannery O'Connor's 1952 novel. Can you imagine a "Holy Church of Christ Without Christ"? Fanfare reviewer Raymond Tuttle says "Gallo's music is a fever dream of gospel hymns and Salvation Army bands." (By the way, there's a 1979 film version of Wise Blood directed by John Huston.) The Adam Meckler Orchestra wind ensemble backs the eight singing characters. Tuttle tells us further, "Wise Blood is a Southern Gothic classic..." It comes to us on a single New Focus compact disc. Another opera by Gatto was broadcast on Sunday, July 3rd of last year. The Making of Americans (2008), his rendering of the 1934 novel by Gertrude Stein, was adapted into a radio opera in 2019. Anthony Gatto (b. 1962) is a real multimedia talent who started off in the jazz milieu. He studied under sax legend Ornette Coleman. Gatto went on to found the Festival, Dancing In Your Head.

Wise Blood, the opera, is a sort of sacrilegious deconstruction of Protestant Christianity. To balance this out we need some truly sacred choral music rooted in the Catholic tradition. There's time remaining for your audition of the Latin motets of the great Netherlandish master, Josquin des Prez (c.1440-1521). The year 2021 marked the five hundredth anniversary of Josquin's death, which was commemorated by the release of an entire Hyperion compact disc devoted to his polyphonic vocal music for the Church. The motets and Mass movements are sung by the Brabant Ensemble, whose thirteen voices are directed by Stephen Rice.