Listen to Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera

Via Ionarts we have found where Alex from Wellsung discovers Bernard Herrmann's opera on Wuthering Heights.

The story, I gather, is that Hermann (composer of all the famous Hitchcock scores and more) saw it as his life's work, but couldn't get it staged, and in fact the only artifact we have today is a so-so record he funded and conducted himself, which is now way out of print (here's the Amazon page with more). One of the big arias for Catherine also appeared on one of you-know-who's discs a couple years back.

The You Know Who is Renée Fleming, not Voldemort.

The musical language starts where you might expect from his film music, but goes so much further. At the moment I turned it on I thought I had stumbled onto part of the end of Wozzeck. The orchestration is immense and fascinating, moving seamlessly between intricately woven dissonances and passionate, engaging lyricism--none of that "ok, we're done with the 20th century business, now for a song" stuff--the whole thing is remarkably confidant. Neo-romantic I guess, but I mean that in the "so that's where the great lost voice of popular opera went" sense rather than the "major chords suck" sense.

If you are interested:

If you're in receiver distance of WFMT, or get it from the internets, he's playing the third and fourth acts next Sunday (9:00 PM)...

We would advise our readers to try and listen to this rarity. To get some background on it, you can read this old post.

Categories: Music, Opera, Wuthering Heights