Harrison Birtwistle's first opera, Punch and Judy (1966-1967), is not for the faint of heart, either musically or dramatically. Auden described Stephen Pruslin's formally innovative and semantically clever libretto as one of the finest of the twentieth century. The artificial conventions of the medieval Punch and Judy puppet show offer some emotional distance from the plot's unflinching cruelty, but the opera remains profoundly unsettling. The creators sum up the ambiguity of the opera's moral, or amoral, universe by ... Read More
Harrison Birtwistle's first opera, Punch and Judy (1966-1967), is not for the faint of heart, either musically or dramatically. Auden described Stephen Pruslin's formally innovative and semantically clever libretto as one of the finest of the twentieth century. The artificial conventions of the medieval Punch and Judy puppet show offer some emotional distance from the plot's unflinching cruelty, but the opera remains profoundly unsettling. The creators sum up the ambiguity of the opera's moral, or amoral, universe by describing it as A Tragical Comedy or A Comical Tragedy, and that's an apt designation for its dramatic peculiarity. Birtwistle's music is largely piercingly spiky, but there are moments of lyricism, and his text setting has a musical logic that moves the plot forward, rather than creating the kind of generalized vocal hysteria that can drain atonal opera of any dramatic energy. The transparent instrumental writing, which can trace its lineage to L'histoire du Soldat, is often goofily... Read Less
Add this copy of Birtwistle: Punch and Judy to cart. $23.32, good condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Diego, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1994 by Etcetera.
