"“top-class...exalted levels...intensely and movingly performed”
--Barney Zwartz, The Age"
THE LOSER
DAVID LANG
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
THE LOSER
PRESENTED BY AUSTRALIAN CONTEMPORARY OPERA CO
AND MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE
KINDLY SUPPORTED BY HANS & PETRA HENKELL
THE LOSER
music & libretto by David Lang (Australian Premiere)
STARRING
Christopher Hillier
director
LINDA THOMPSON
conductor
CARLO ANTONIOLI
(MSO Cybec Assistant Conductor Fellow 2022)
orchestra
Marianne Rothschild, violin
Bernadette Baker, violin
Vicky Vukovich, viola
Diamant Dmitry, cello
Nic Synot, double bass
Stuart Byrne, flute
Stephen Robinson, oboe
Sara Rafferton, bassoon
Theodore Pike, percussion
Joyce Chahine, piano
THE LOSER
Music by David Lang
Libretto by the composer, based on novel by Thomas Bernhard
"boldly unconventional" - The New York Times
A complex and unsettling piece about talent, jealousy and genius,
THE LOSER, based on the book by Thomas Bernhard, is brought to life by a single baritone voice and instrumental quintet.
Telling the story of a concert pianist who finds himself in the same masterclass as the super-talent Glenn Gould and realises he will never be that great. The narrator is his friend, who describes meeting ‘the loser’ on Suicide Mountain, a place they have both considered throwing themselves into the void.
The beauty of the music makes us more intensely aware of the grief and disappointment that fuel the narrator’s anger...the restrained and gorgeous score haunting reminders of what the narrator has given up. This is, after all, his whole life that he is talking about: his blighted dreams, his unrealised hopes.”
“…the score is a model of how music can animate words..."
- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times