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Work Title Europera 5 |
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Date Composed in 1991. Premiered in Buffalo, N.Y., April 18, 1991. |
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Ensemble Type Opera |
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Work Length 60 minutes |
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Instrumentation For two singers, piano, tape machine operator, and lighting technician. |
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Comments This was Cage’s last opera, and the simplest to perform in the Europera series. It is at essence a collage for two singers, each of whom sings five arias of his or her choosing from the standard opera repertoire. Accompaniment is provided by a pianist who plays excerpts from six different opera transcriptions, as well as a single 78-rpm Victrola player, making use of six historical opera recordings; additionally, there is a performer who plays a prerecorded tape. Also present is a radio and a silent television. For more information on this work and others in the Europera series, see Stefan Beyst's August 2005 essay John Cage's Europeras: a light- and soundscape as musical manifesto (http://d-sites.net/english/cage.htm), or Laura Kuhn’s comprehensive doctoral dissertation, John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2: The Musical Means of Revolution (UCLA, 1992). |
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Publication Peters Edition EP 67405R |
