The Berlin-based British composer Stephen Crowe has a song cycle based on the James Joyce's risqué letters to his wife, Nora, an opera based on a 1985 television interview with Francis Bacon, and a Barbra Streisand tribute band that performs hardcore covers of classics like "The Way We Were" and "Woman in Love," to his credit.
This week, Crowe presents his latest opera, Pterodactyls of Ptexas, as a work-in-progress at the Acker Stadt Palast in Mitte. The world premiere was last night; the second, and final, performance of this 80-minute-work (described as a concert performance in full costume) is in a few hours' time.
The Acker Stadt Palast website describes Crowe's "eighth opera," a work for electronics, piano and five singers set in the Wild West, as "stuffed with trigger-happy cowgirls, gyrating dinosaurs, and saloon brawls. An ambitious young woman navigates the chauvinistic world of pre-history, belting out neolithic arias in the process."
The composer has given us a musical preview on his personal site, which includes the work's overture and two electronic numbers, "Hoodwinked Aria" and "Bird Shit Aria." Let us say that our interest in piqued, especially considering the critical acclaim for Crowe's earlier Francis Bacon Opera. Reviewing the 2012 premiere at the Camden Arts Centre in London, The Independent wrote that "the future of new opera" looked healthy with Crowe at the wheel.
"Crowe's comedy had the rare quality of making people laugh with the music as much as the words, as pianist Genevieve Ellis's splintered figures offered their own acerbic commentary on an increasingly bibulous conversation about beguilement, realism and sensation between Bacon (Christopher Killerby) and Bragg (Oliver Brignall)."
PTERODACTYLS OF PTEXAS // new electronic opera
Stephen Crowe opera for electronics, piano and five singers World Premiere (Work in progress) - Friday January 6, 8:00pm
Acker Stadt Palast
Ackerstraße 169/170 10115 Berlin
Picture credit: Mr Big Eichelhäher - Template:Taken by Ebba Karlsson, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48994351