FULL BABEL 46 (Xavier Montsalvatge) Tarragona 2001
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Babel 46
- Composer: Montsalvatge Xavier
- Libretto: Xavier Montsalvatge Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Teatre Metropol, Tarragona, Spain, Escola d'Art de la Diputació de Tarragona
- Recorded: 2001
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Aula de Cant del Conservatori de música de la Diputació de Tarragona
- Conductor: unknown
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: cmreus
- Date Published: 2012
- Format: Unknown
- Quality Video: 2 Audio:2
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Babel 46 is the third opera by Xavier Montsalvatge, which narrates the relationships established within a group of refugees of various nationalities – and which are expressed in different languages – while they await their repatriation after the Second World War.
“When composing Babel 46, at the same time that I did not think of departing too much from operatic conventionalisms, I wanted to avoid the influence that could derive from my preferences for the four great nationalist schools of opera: the Russian, so important ; the German one, full of philosophical speculations that I would not know how to assume; the French, less transendental, although of true projection, and the most emblematic one, the Italian. Fatally, however, the latter, for which I do not hide a special predilection, may have infiltrated more than one page of the score, making me run the risk that someone may consider it close to a deliberate “neo-verism”. The important point, however, is that in one or another way, the dramatic knot of the libretto is reflected with a certain realism, which highlights the contrast between a solidarity feigned by the characters during their forced internment which, at the time of freedom, turns out to be a pure lie, a fiction promoted by the singularity of the circumstances.”
Xavier Montsalvatge, 1996.