Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

MINOTAUR THE ISLAND

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Composer: David Young
Writer/Director: Margaret Cameron
Performers: Deborah Kayser, Caroline Lee, Hellen Sky and Ida Duelund Hansen
Double Bass: Mark Cauvin
Percussion: Matthias Schack-Arnott
Harpsichord: Anastasia Russell-Head

Virtually all the music for Monteverdi’s 1608 opera L’Arianna, one of the most influential and famous examples of early Baroque opera, has been lost. Minotaur The Island is the first part of an exciting new chamber opera which re-imagines the lost opera of Monteverdi, focussing on the tragic story of the Minotaur.

Minotaur The Island turns around the figure of the Minotaur, the bastard child of perverse love. The work begins with the establishment of the mythic world, and an introduction to the poetics of the piece. Various characters, objects, sounds and theoretical constructs are introduced and developed. We see the conception of Pasiphae, King Minos’ mail order bride, who has become obsessed with the bull of heaven. She gives birth to the monstrous Minotaur, part bull, part human. The Minotaur grows and becomes ferocious, needing to devour men for sustenance, and as a consequence is locked away, in a gigantic labyrinth.

MINOTAUR - THE ISLAND has been co-commissioned by Ten Days on the Island and Dr Peta Gillingham. Part of the New Music Network 2011 Series.

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

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