Disc 1 ACT ONE SCENE 1 You need a ticket to breathe the air SCENE 2 A few things I collect beside bus tickets SCENE 3 Any more fares please? SCENE 4 It's kind of interesting rubbish SCENE 5 Scarper! SCENE 6 Forty sheep and twenty reindeer? SCENE 7 Coughs and sneezes spread diseases SCENE 8 Except take a piss SCENE 9 Doodlebug Disc 2 ACT TWO SCENE 10 A Famous cup of British tea SCENE 11 This was a good one Ponders End to Waterloo SCENE 12 I'm highly adept at the tango SCENE 13 Show me a bike! SCENE 14 Chuk persh szing! SCENE 15 Happy birthday, dear Michael! SCENE 16 I am having a trouble with hanky panky SCENE 17 Latin ΰ la Hammersmith Palais SCENE 18 A hundred stops but they have no name SCENE 19 I was trying to explain something about Dada John Graham-Hall (tenor) William Sheldon (boy soprano) Vivian Tierney (soprano) Michael Nyman Band Conducted by Paul McGrath This is a recording of the Almeida Opera Production, designed by Jeremy Herbert and directed by Lindsay Posner at the Almeida Theatre, London, July 2004 MNRCD101-2 |
MAN AND BOY DADA MAN AND BOY: DADA An Opera in two acts composed by Michael NymanLibretto: Michael Hastings The generously packaged, slip cased 2-CD set contains a four-colour 44-page booklet with complete libretto. Man and Boy: Dada is the first in a triptych of chamber operas written by Nyman with librettist Michael Hastings. It tells the story of the unlikely friendships between the ageing Dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters, who is exiled in war-torn London; a 12-year-old boy called Michael, who shares the artist's obsession with collecting London Transport bus tickets; and Michael's mother, widowed by the war. The recording reunites the cast from the UK premiere performance at the Almeida Theatre in July 2004 tenor John Graham Hall as Schwitters, William Sheldon as the boy, and soprano Vivian Tierney as the boy's mother. Paul McGrath conducts the Michael Nyman Band. Nyman's identification with the storyline runs deep, for as a child growing up in South Chingford in the 1950s, he hoarded bus tickets as part of a collecting mania that also included cigarette cards, matchbox labels, coins and train numbers. In 2001, Hastings approached Nyman to suggest collaborating on a radio play about a post-war London boy who collected bus tickets. Nyman naturally recognised himself in the main character. But he also had an extra element to contribute to the story line. He had recently returned from Dusseldorf where he saw a Schwitters exhibition and discovered the artist's recurring use of bus tickets in his collages. The fusion of the two characters' mutual fixation leads to a friendship which drives the opera's plot which also reveals the terrible loss suffered by Schwitters as he was forced by the Nazis to leave Germany. The Almeida production of Man and Boy: Dada was greeted with critical acclaim. "Touching and witty, naοve and profound, Man and Boy: Dada is a journey, well worth taking," said Nick Kimberley in The Evening Standard. Writing in the Financial Times, David Murray called it a "genuine success," and Ivan Hewett in The Daily Telegraph found it a "a subtle and touching piece of music-theatre." Music by Michael Nyman Libretto by Michael Hastings |
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© 2006 Michael Nyman Ltd. |
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