ROBE: a fashion-opera
This recording of Alastair White’s ‘fashion-opera’ ROBE features the original cast from the premiere performance as part of Tête-à-Tête, London in 2019. The unique concept employs only four female singers with flute and piano, but also dancers and actors, in this futuristic drama. The work was shortlisted for the Creative Edinburgh Award and described as “striking and evocative” (Planet Hugill)
In a society where the difference between the real and the virtual is no longer meaningful, a powerful new being threatens the stability which holds these worlds together. Two elders, Neachneohain and Beira, convince the young cartographer Rowan to complete a terrible task: descend into the mind of the superintelligence EDINBURGH and map this creature so as to grant its desire – to become a living city, teeming with human life and activity. Witnessing visions of the awful realness of life beyond cyberspace, Rowan agrees – plunging into its depths: a strange, abstract world of data and dream.
Thirty years later, Rowan and EDINBURGH have fallen in love, have lived their lives together. Though every morning she awakes with no memory of the past, Rowan has almost completed the map that EDINBURGH desires. But into this map Rowan has woven something else: something hidden, silent, unsaid. As these rifts in the structure undo causality itself, she must answer the question: what exactly has she created? And what does it have to do with this strange, otherworldly figure who sings the red song of a forgotten city – of an ancient, poisoned ROBE…
FULL LIBRETTO IN BOOKLET
Track Listing
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Alastair White (b.1988):
- ROBE: I. Beira's Warning (4:19)
- ROBE: II. Song of Redness (4:17)
- ROBE: III. Neachneohain's Speech (7:46)
- ROBE: IV. Rowan's First Answer (1:01)
- ROBE: V. Song of Silk (3:44)
- ROBE: VI. Duet (0:48)
- ROBE: VII. Beira's Speech (3:32)
- ROBE: VIII. Rowan's Second Answer (0:49)
- ROBE: IX. Song of Heather (2:47)
- ROBE: X. Rowan's Vision (2:40)
- ROBE: XI. Song of Sandstone (1:27)
- ROBE: XII. Neachneohain's Vision (1:38)
- ROBE: XIII. The Arming of Rowan; The History of the World (3:37)
- ROBE: XIV. Song of Morning (0:50)
- ROBE: XV. EDINBURGH Awakes; Rowan Descends (5:15)
- ROBE: XVI. A Dream of Q-el's City; Wake up, Rowan (1:31)
- ROBE: XVII. Rowan and EDINBURGH (6:41)
- ROBE: XVIII. Anthem (4:03)
- ROBE: XIX. Beira's Vision (6:59)
- ROBE: XX. Epilogue (2:07)
Reviews
“White favors an embodied lyricism, and his vocal writing flexibly feeds a number of solos, duets and trios often treated a cappella or with the complicity of a flute which Jenni Hogan manages in a controlled way to make a character in its own right. The female quartet undoubtedly plays in favor of this beautiful musical homogeneity.With the help of the performers, Alastair White infuses this virtual dramaturgy with a musical intensity that succeeds in giving it substance, a feat that could not better correspond to the theme of this opera.
” —Pierre Rigaudiere
“White’s views are provocative and refreshing: he wants opera to be critical, to create a space for utopian thinking, to make a difference to the world… there is so much to admire in what the composer tells us of his ambition. The music is crisp, emphatic in its lines, strongly punctuated, severely fragmented, sharply pointillistic, high-modernist in orientation. A group of superb young vocal talents [give] assured, fine-voiced mastery of such difficult vocal writing, so commendably accompanied by the instrumental duo’s highly charged performance.
” —Christopher Ballantine
“Fantastical, dystopian, highly poetic. The music is excellent. The entire cast has a firm grounding in contemporary music and it shows.
” —Claire Jackson
“White’s libretto is highly imaginative as you would expect it to be – I was moved. some duets were wonderfully original. Notable too was the quality of singing – the whole cast of singers quite brilliantly navigated a complex atonal vocal landscape.
” —Karine Hetherington
