FULL IMMORTAL DIAMOND (Grabowsky) Melbourne 2022 Lisa Gerrard
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Immortal Diamond
- Composer: Grabowsky PPaul
- Libretto: Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Venue & Opera Company: Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Australia
- Recorded: October 5, 2022
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Lisa Gerrard
- Conductor: Benjamin Northey
- Orchestra: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: mso
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: mso.live FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
MSO.LIVE continues its month of Australian music with Immortal Diamond, a new work by multi award-winning Australian icon Paul Grabowsky AO. Borrowing its title from a poem by Victorian-era English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Immortal Diamond comprises five sections that explore atmospheres of drama, dissonance, and mysticism. Renowned Australian soprano Lisa Gerrard sings in a floating free style alongside sixteen wordless singers. Though it pays tribute to a nineteenth-century poet, Immortal Diamond speaks to a very contemporary experience. Written during Victoria’s COVID-19 lockdowns, the work, in Grabowsky’s words, ‘can be understood as a secular requiem for those who passed, and a prayer for better days ahead.’
“Immortal Diamond borrows its title from a poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, called That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of Resurrection, in which his unforgettable final lines describe his relationship to Christ:
since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond
This beautiful poem, full of extraordinary sound pictures, provides the inspiration for a sound world in which Lisa Gerrard will range freely, one that speaks of the power of spiritual love and renewal. The music will ebb and flow slowly like a tide, the orchestra and sixteen wordless singers embedded within it will wrap around her voice, occasionally falling away to the ruminations of the piano as it continues accompanying a song that—in a sense—has no beginning and no end.”
— Paul Grabowsky AO, MSO Composer in Residence