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DIE MASSNAHME or The Decision (Eisler) Birmingham 2023 Birmingham Opera Company
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Die Massnahme or The Decision
- Composer: Eisler Hanns
- Libretto: Bertolt Brecht Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Birmingham Opera Company, England
- Recorded: March 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Aimee Berwick, Paksie Vernon, Therese Collins, Wendy Dawn Thompson
- Conductor: Alpesh Chauhan
- Orchestra: Birmingham Opera Company Orchestra
- Chorus: Birmingham Opera Company Chorus
- Chorus Master: Mariana Rosas, Themba Mvula
- Stage Director: Anthony Almeida
- Stage Designer: Claudia Fragoso
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: OperaVision
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Quote from OperaVision:
Four agitators are dispatched from Soviet Russia to foment revolution in pre-communist China. Along the way, they meet a young sympathizer who offers to be their guide. But when they return to Moscow, they confess to having killed him. Is it ever right to kill?
The Birmingham Opera Company presents Die Massnahme, a rarely performed, heart-pounding work by writer Bertolt Brecht and composer Hanns Eisler. Here artistic, moral and social challenges go hand in hand. Brecht and Eisler lived in a time of intolerance and censorship in the 1920s and 30s and were both ostracized by the Nazis. Later, in their new adopted country across the Atlantic, the pair were placed under the surveillance of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Today, in the 2020s, Brecht’s “teaching play” The Measure still has the power to provoke. The Birmingham staging is described as “impressive, haunting” by The Stage and “an encounter with a truly evil work of art” by The Spectator.