Medea Booklet

476 1927 A CHAMBER OPERA BY GORDON KERRY AND JUSTIN MACDONNELL CHAMBER MADE OPERA MERLYN QUAIFE • ANGELA GIBLIN MICHAEL C. SMITH • DAVID LEMKE MARK SUMMERBELL CONDUCTOR A chamber opera in five scenes Music by Gordon Kerry b. 1961 Libretto by Justin Macdonnell b. 1946 after Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 4 BC–65 AD Medea Merlyn Quaife soprano Nurse / Chorus Angela Giblin mezzo-soprano Jason / Chorus Michael C. Smith tenor Creon / Chorus David Lemke baritone Ensemble Elizabeth Barcan flutes Denise Papaluca piano, keyboard Peter Neville percussion Rosanne Hunt cello Chamber Made Opera Mark Summerbell conductor 2 3 Scene 1 0 When Creon would have killed you 8’08 Jason, Medea 1 The gods of wedlock are the gods of death 8’06 Medea, Chorus ! I have a robe, a gift of heaven 2’40 Medea 2 Be cunning, lady 2’01 Nurse, Medea Scene 4 3 But see now, Creon comes 2’09 @ Nulla vis flammae tumidive venti 3’51 Nurse, Creon, Medea Chorus 4 You go, alone 4’05 £ Tu nunc vestes tinge Creusae 2’12 Creon, Medea Medea 5 I am no tyrant 4’38 $ O horror! Disaster comes 2’42 Creon, Medea Nurse, Medea Scene 2 Scene 5 6 If you seek, poor little heart 1’55 % It is done. Father and daughter lie in the ruins of their house 1’13 Medea, Nurse, Chorus Nurse, Chorus 7 Candida nostri saecula patres 3’49 ^ Go now, Medea, while you still have time 5’17 Chorus, Medea Nurse, Medea Scene 3 & Assist me, citizens, to avenge your princes’ death 3’58 Jason, Medea, Nurse 8 Fate is hard 3’35 Jason * Per alta vade spatia sublimi aethere 3’41 Chorus, Jason 9 The dreaming sea 3’22 Medea Total Playing Time 67’31 4 5 Before commencing a distinguished career in hatred and power and the exhausted horror of the of Jason appears, and draws from her, almost rest in peace; in front of Jason she kills the other arts administration, my friend and colleague tragedy’s end. The instrumental ensemble unwillingly, a long and ornate vocal line. In a and disappears, leaving him and the chorus Justin Macdonnell had studied Classics. Some consists of flute (doubling alto and piccolo), Verdian kind of way, her vocal line gains power singing ‘that where Medea is, there is no god.’ years ago, he suggested to me that the Medea piano/synthesiser, percussion and cello, with and hysteria against the more formal rhythms of Seneca was close to the centre of power in of Seneca would, in his view, form a good basis certain sounds associated with certain characters the chorus singing the wedding hymn (in Nero’s Rome. Being at one stage tutor to the for a piece of music theatre. I thought the idea or ideas. Seneca’s Latin) off-stage. Her nurse – a mezzo, young emperor, he had first-hand knowledge of fascinating, and it seemed like only a few days naturally! – tries to calm and caution Medea (and Medea is a woman who has betrayed her family how gratuitously destructive untrammelled later that a draft libretto arrived on my desk in here Latin represents the ‘foreign’ tongue of power could be – indeed he himself was which Justin had distilled the essence of in order to help the man she loves avoid certain Medea’s homeland), but to no avail. Creon, ultimately a victim of it. He was also a Stoic, and Seneca’s tragedy – retaining some of Seneca’s death. She uses her powerful magic to help represented by a strutting bitonal march on had a philosophical thesis to explore in this best poetry – into a lean, evocative and singable Jason win the fabled Golden Fleece, which is her synthesiser, appears to pronounce exile on this work, namely, what are the cause and effect of text. I sketched settings of some of the text father’s most important possession in the witch whom he fears, but foolishly allows her extremism? Medea is, after all, a woman and a kingdom of Colchis, and escapes with Jason and ‘one more day to say goodbye’. (Medea’s aria ‘The dreaming sea’ in Scene 3 is foreigner, so has no legal rights to protect her thus the earliest part of the score), on the basis the Argonauts. She murders her young brother Medea’s hatred continues to build, and her plans from exile, or having her children taken from her, of which Chamber Made Opera and ABC Classic and scatters his remains, knowing that her father to mature, especially in her scene with Jason, or seeing her husband marry another woman. FM commissioned the work in its entirety. This will have to stop and give the boy a proper burial, who is, of course, a tenor and with whom she His play is about the inexorable increase of recording was made during the first season in thus slowing his pursuit. The fugitive Jason and has a kind of anti-love duet. Jason’s dilemma is energy in Medea’s hatred: she herself boasts Melbourne in 1993. Douglas Horton’s production Medea arrive in Corinth where the king, Creon, that in order to save himself and his sons he she ‘will storm the gods and shake the for Chamber Made has subsequently been seen offers Jason (and his and Medea’s two young must betray Medea, whom he still loves. His universe,’ and that – morally, if not literally – is in Sydney, Canberra and Washington’s Kennedy sons) protection from the pursuing armies if precisely what she does. In our opera this moral constriction is represented in a web of Center conducted by Mark Summerbell; in 1995 Jason will marry the Corinthian princess, Creusa. process is enacted by the way in which her twelve-note patterns; his admission that he loves it received a new production by the Berliner Medea, though, will be banished. music goes from being inchoate and hysterical their sons gives Medea the idea for her final Kammeroper who presented it in subsequent to becoming tonally stable, majestic and long- It is here that Euripides and Seneca begin their revenge. Creusa will die when she puts on a seasons in Berlin and Düsseldorf conducted by breathed – ‘I have regained my royal state’ in plays. But in Euripides’ more familiar version, hexed robe, but Jason’s punishment will be Scott Curry. Merlyn Quaife has sung the Scene 5 is in an unambiguous C major. She is, Medea is talked about before she appears on worse: ‘Let him live.’ Jason will have to live with demanding title role in all performances. as Seneca takes pains to show us, a witch right the memories of seeing his bride burned alive, stage. In Seneca, by contrast, she is there right from the start. But he also shows how she is and his children murdered by their mother. So, The piece is written in such a way that the Nurse, from the start: she has just heard that Jason and pushed into a position in which her anger, rage when we finally hear from the chorus that the Jason and Creon can, as trio, duo or solo, Creusa are to marry, and is determined to take and power feed on, and take an almost erotic Princess and King have perished, Jason appears, function as the Chorus. In Scene 1 the Chorus is revenge for this betrayal through her considerable delight in, themselves. Sadly, it’s an all too exhorting a mob to kill ‘this foreign witch’. Medea the off-stage voices of the Corinthian people, but magic powers. She is, in our version, already so familiar story. they can also comment on the drama – angry she can barely speak. Sprechstimme has already killed one child, with a prayer to the particularly expressing fear at Medea’s increasing replaces singing at first, except where the name shade of her murdered brother that he might now Gordon Kerry 6 7 Gordon Kerry He has been variously General Manager of the State Opera of South Australia and Director of Gordon Kerry’s catalogue the National Opera of New Zealand, Program includes orchestral music Director of the Sydney Festival and Executive commissioned by the ABC, Director of Confederation of Australian BBC, Symphony Australia, Professional Performing Arts. He has acted as Ars Musica Australis and consultant and provided management services the Australian Youth to numerous and varied performing and visual Orchestra; chamber music arts organisations across Australia as well as for for Musica Viva Australia, federal, state and local government. as well as independent ensembles in Australia, Britain, Germany, the From 1988 as Executive Director of the Australia- USA, Sweden and Russia, and choral works for Latin America Foundation he developed an ensembles including Gondwana Voices, Sydney extensive network in Latin America for the Philharmonia Choirs, the Prague Chamber Choir promotion of cultural exchange between and the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic. Recent Australia and countries in that region. works include a completion of Mozart’s Requiem commissioned by ABC Classic FM for the 250th He has contributed to journals throughout anniversary of Mozart’s birth and string quartets Australia and abroad and is the author of scores for ensembles in the UK and the Netherlands. of studies and reports on the area of national and regional cultural policy. His book Arts, Gordon Kerry studied composition with Barry Minister? is regarded as a standard reference Conyngham and has held fellowships from the on arts funding history in Australia in the two Australia Council, Peggy Glanville-Hicks Trust and decades 1967-87. His Fifty Years in the Bush – the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

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