Love and Other Demons

"Love and Other Demons" is an opera in two acts by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös to a libretto by the Hungarian author Kornél Hamvai. It premiered on Date|2008-08-10 at the Glyndebourne Festival. The libretto is based on the novel "Of Love and Other Demons" (1994) by Gabriel García Márquez. The opera is the result of a commission by Glyndebourne and the BBC. This opera will be broadcast in full on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday, Date|2008-10-11.

Roles

At Glyndebourne, the performance lasted for 3 hours 50 minutes, including a 1 hour 20 minutes interval. The staging is a co-production with the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Details

From the program notes: "A young girl, the daughter of the Marquis, is attacked by a rabid dog and finds herself imprisoned in the convent where the Bishop's exorcist comes to drive out her demons. Yet soon it is he who is possessed, consumed by 'the most terrible demon of all' — LOVE."

Unusually, "Love and Other Demons" consistently uses multiple languages. The different levels of narrationand action in the story have their own characteristic language: English is the 'everyday language' of the noblemen, Latin is the language of the church rites, Spanish is used by Delaura whenever his conversations with Sierva touch on personal feelings, and Yoruba is the 'secret' language of the slaves.

References

External links

* [http://www.glyndebourne.com/operas/love_and_other_demons/ Glyndebourne website — extensive background]
* [http://www.schott-music.com/news/archive/show,2261.html Schott Music — Background and videos]