Peter Eötvös' opera Angels in America, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning play by Tony Kushner with a libretto by Mari Mezei, receives its UK premiere in a concert performance on March 26 at London’s Barbican Centre performed by David Robertson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. First performed in 2004, the opera is a meditation on the destructive power of AIDS. It is told through a web of dreams and memories touched by reality as the lives of two troubled New York couples profoundly affected by the disease become intertwined.

Originally a stage work of daunting proportions, the operatic manifestation of Angels in America has won its creators praise for the distillation and enhancement of the work's text and thematic material. Bernard Holland comments in the New York Times:

Mr. Eötvös' music augments traditional strings, winds and brass with saxophones, guitars, electronic keyboards, exotic percussion, ringing telephones and sirens. The vocal lines can ease into speech and usually operate against drifting clouds of sound. Mr. Eötvös' success with prosody outstrips that of most American opera composers in his ability to fit music to the flow of American English. He has written truly theatrical music that advances texts rather than calling attention to itself.

Angels in America was commissioned by Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and premiered there in November 2004. The opera’s US premiere took place at Opera Boston followed shortly after by a new production Fort Worth Opera in May, 2008. This month at the Barbican several members of the Fort Worth cast reprise their roles from that production including David Adam Moore, Scott Scully, Janice Hall, Kelly Anderson and Ava Pine.

For more information on the music of Peter Eötvös, visit www.schott-music.com.

For precise ticketing information on the performance of Angels in America, go to www.barbican.org.uk.

Peter Eötvös
Angels in America (2003/2004, rev. 2008)
opera in two acts
libretto (En) by Mari Mezei, based on the play by Tony Kushner
for 2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, baritone, lyric baritone, counter tenor, bass baritone; three additional singers and sound engineer
1(pic, afl).0.1(bscl, cbcl).2sx(1. ssx, asx, bsx; 2. asx, tsx).0-0.1.1.0-2perc-2gtr(1. acc; 2. egtr)-2kbd-str
180'