Voir toutes les partitions de Charles Wuorinen
SKU: PE.EP67890
ISBN 9790300747613. 297 x 420mm inches. English.
Librett o by James Fenton
In a make-believe world, based loosely on Bombay and Kashmir, the story of Haroun is a tale of a fight between the free imagination and the powers that oppose it. Haroun's father, Rashid, the Shah of Blah, is a professional and gifted story-teller, a popular figure much in demand at public events. Feeling neglected, his wife is persuaded to leave him and run away with a neighbor. After this, Rashid loses confidence in his powers of story-tellling, haunted by his son's question: 'What's the use of stories that aren't even there?' Rashid is due to speak at a political rally to be held by the sinister politician, Snooty Buttoo. He is told that if he does not come up with his usual fund of tales, his tongue will be cut out. As Rashid despairs, Haroun determines to rescue his father's talent - a project in which he learns that the Ocean of the Sea of Stories, the source of all stories, is being polluted by the enemy of all stories, the evil Khattam Shud. In a series of brilliant imagined adventures, Haroun succeeds in defeating the powers of darkness, and restoring happiness to his family, and to the city where he lives.
Salman Ruishdie's children's book, written in the aftermath of the fatwa, has an effervescent style which is full of rhymes and wordplay. The libretto stays very close to the spirit of the original, conjuring up a fantasy world in which, nonetheless, one never loses sight of harsh political reality and the great issues of freedom of speech and imagination. -- James Fenton, 1998
SKU: PE.EP67836AA
ISBN 9790300746753.
< em>Fenton Songs are settings of four poems from James Fenton’s collection Out of Danger. Wuorinen undertook these in 1997 as a preparation for setting Fenton’s libretto based on Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The first performances took place in New York at the Guggenheim Museum on May 17 and 18, 1998.
Wuorinen writes I see the sequence of poems as proceeding from public to private, from agitation to repose, with local ups and downs along the way.
