New Crowned Hope

Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952)

La Passion de Simone
Musical Journey in Fifteen Stations
Text by Amin Maalouf
UK premiere
Performed in French with English surtitles
Dawn Upshaw soprano
Michael Schumacher dancer
Text spoken by Dominique Blanc
London Voices Peter Sellars director
Robert Spano conductor Martin Pakledinaz costume design
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra James F. Ingalls lighting design
Diane J. Malecki executive producer
Commissioned by New Crowned Hope (Vienna), Barbican Centre, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Co-produced by New Crowned Hope (Vienna), Barbican Centre, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
'La Passion de Simone' was first performed on 26 November 2006 at the Jungendstiltheater, Vienna.

Tuesday 10 & Thursday 12 July 2007, 8pm

Barbican Hall
The Barbican Centre
is provided by the Tuesday 10 July, 6.30pm Barbican Hall
City of London
Corporation as part
Pre-concert talk
of its contribution to Kaija Saariaho and Peter Sellars in conversation
the cultural life of Free to same-day ticket-holders
London and the
nation.
New Crowned Hope
Welcome to New Crowned Hope
What birthday present can we offer a man who was so
committed to the transformational properties of
pleasure, a man who was so crazy and so silly because
he was so serious, a man whose every musical impulse
breathes reconciliation of opposing forces, of conflict
translated and transcended, a heartbroken, hopeful,
generous man who did not live to see the world that he
and his friends had the courage to imagine?
Mozart died so young, at age 35. He died in Vienna,
deeply in debt, and was buried in an anonymous grave
with the poorest people of the city. So the Mozart story
leads us to faceless people in mass graves.
The year before his death he could not get work in
Vienna (he had made his political convictions too clear in
his operas and was out of favour with the incoming
emperor), so he had to go on the road, travelling from
city to city, looking for work, hoping to send money home
to his family. He became an economic migrant. He put
up a bold front, but this experience was so emotionally
devastating that even Mozart stopped composing.
He returned to Vienna empty-handed and began to
write the luminous music of his final year. La clemenza di
Tito was once thought to be reactionary and undramatic.
It has unexpectedly become a most important opera for
the 21st century: it is about response to terrorism,
breaking cycles of violence, and the rule of mercy. In Act I
conspirators assassinate the President and set fire to the
capital. In Act II the President miraculously recovers and
orders the terrorists to be brought before him. He
forgives them, deals with their issues, and invites them to
join the government. We all thought this opera was a
daydream until Nelson Mandela became President of
South Africa, formed a government with the people who
had tried to kill him, and declared that the cycle of killing
must stop.
Mozart dictated his unfinished Requiem from his
deathbed. It opens with a cry for mercy and a
Welcome
description of the soul’s ascent from darkness into light.
What will the ceremonies for the dead be in our
generation, in a time when new mass graves are
uncovered nearly every week? What will the ceremony
be like that finally puts names to the faces of the
disappeared, in which perpetrators come clean, and
both the living and the dead can finally move forward or
rest in peace?
Perhaps the best birthday gift for this amazing man is to
invite artists from around the world to come together and
pick up where he left off. Every initiative in New Crowned
Hope is a new commission. Some artists will be speaking
from places where their peoples are living through
genocide and civil war and their aftermaths, where the
need is to somehow turn the page of history, where acts
of mercy, imagination and negotiation are the only hope.
The fires in the Paris suburbs make it clear that there can
be no illusions about a First World and a Third World –
there is one planet, and we all share it.
In 1789, French citizens also set fire to public buildings.
Mozart was an active Freemason, as were some of the
men behind the American and French revolutions. He
was one of the thinkers involved in imagining the ‘next’
Europe, a Europe beyond autocracy and kings. Fearing
that events in France would prove contagious, the secret
police closed all the Masonic lodges in Vienna. An
influential group petitioned the Emperor to reconsider,
because it was vital that Vienna not look like an
authoritarian police state. The Emperor relented and
permitted one lodge to reopen. Mozart’s last public
appearance was to conduct at its reopening. Three
weeks later he was dead. The name of this lodge was
New Crowned Hope. Where Mozart ended is where we
begin.
Peter Sellars
Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope
Vienna, November 2006
3
New Crowned Hope

New Crowned Hope: An Introduction

The last time we saw a Peter Sellars production at the preceding months. He conceived instead the idea of
Barbican, it was Mozart’s unfinished opera Zaide. Set in commissioning new work, asking living artists to take their
a Turkish prison (although Sellars transposed the action inspiration from three key works created during Mozart’s
to a Brooklyn sweatshop), the story follows a forbidden last year (1791) – the operas The Magic Flute and La
love affair between slaves who escape and are clemenza di Tito, and the unfinished Requiem – thus
recaptured. Sellars foregrounded the contemporary extrapolating Mozart’s own ideas into the 21st century.
resonances of the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ –
There is some original Mozart to be heard in the festival –
‘Mozart,’ he explained, ‘was attempting to construct a
notably the piano works used by the celebrated
bridge between Europe and the Muslim world.’ The
American choreographer Mark Morris for his Mozart
ending was never written, and Sellars left it ambiguous,
Dances – but most of the music in New Crowned Hope is
posing the question: ‘Do we want compassion and to
new and is being performed for the first time in the UK,
discover mutual truths, or have a fight to the death?’
not least the premieres of major new works by John
Sellars’s curatorship of New Crowned Hope, a festival Adams and Kaija Saariaho. Sellars has had long-
named after the Masonic lodge to which Mozart standing relationships with both composers, in Adams’s
belonged (and for whose re-opening he wrote a little case for more than 20 years since they first collaborated
cantata that was to be the last piece of music he on Nixon in China, arguably the most successful of all
completed before his death a few weeks later), asks the contemporary operas.
same question on a larger canvas – a hugely ambitious
Adams’s ravishing new piece, A Flowering Tree, reworks
series of events that took place last autumn in Vienna, as
a 2,000-year-old South Indian folk tale, but is also loosely
part of that city’s celebrations for the composer’s 250th
based on Mozart’s Magic Flute, with its similar theme of
anniversary, and highlights of which are now coming to
magic and transformation. It is perhaps the most
London, courtesy of the Barbican.
globalised of Adams’s operas, with its influences from
Sellars believes that many people misunderstand Mozart: Indian ragas and Balinese chants, the cascading voices
‘He was, in fact, one of the leading intellectuals of Europe of Schola Cantorum from Venezuela and its performers
and one of the most intensely political artists in history. dressed in garish Bollywood floral gear.
Every one of his operas is a radical gesture of equality
The Kronos Quartet follow this global theme with their
between the ruling class and the working class.’ Sellars
Alternative Radio evening, which uses a radio show
has always tried to put Mozart’s ideas, sometimes
format to discuss contemporary issues while the Kronos
controversially, in a contemporary context. In his 1980s
play music by composers from around the world that
stagings of the Mozart–Da Ponte trilogy, he set Così fan
relates to what is being discussed. They will also present
tutte in a diner in Cape Cod, made Don Giovanni a
the UK premieres of the long-awaited Third String
cocaine-snorting slum thug, and had Figaro getting
Quartet by the Polish composer Henryk Górecki and an
married in Trump Tower.
important new work, The Cusp of Magic, by their fellow
In preparing to launch New Crowned Hope in Vienna at American, Terry Riley, which features the Chinese pipa
the end of last year, Sellars knew that Mozart’s adopted maestro Wu Man. The Knonos’s commitment to new
city would already be punch-drunk from different music is total – with, astonishingly, over 450 new works
interpretations of the composer’s work offered during the commissioned by them over the past 30 years.

4
 New Crowned Hope

Saariaho’s Sellars-directed opera L’Amour de loin When New Crowned Hope opened in Vienna on 14
(premiered in Salzburg in 2000) established her as a November 2006, the same week saw the results of the US
world-renowned composer, with its shimmering music mid-term elections – perhaps, many people commented
and poetic libretto by Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, at the festival, there was after all some glimmer of hope
who has also written the text for her new work, La Passion that there might be a small shift away from the dark arts
de Simone, about the French-Jewish philosopher, of pre-emptive violence, intolerant fundamentalism and
mathematician and mystic Simone Weil, who starved ecological vandalism. For Sellars, it is not enough to
herself to death in 1943 aged 34 – ‘between the ages of blame others, even politicians. He used to teach a course
Jesus and Mozart,’ as Maalouf points out. ‘Her passion is in global culture: the first essay topic that he gave to his
a discreet but powerful signpost in our misguided world.’ students was: ‘What is wrong with your life, and what are
you going to do about it?’ As John Adams puts it, ‘Art
In her project Wati, the superb Malian singer Rokia
should do more than merely comfort and provide solace.
Traoré imagines Mozart as a griot, one of the hereditary
It should help us examine our deepest selves.’
singers and poets who act as cultural storehouses from
the days of the great African empires of the Middle Ages. For Sellars, the festival’s most urgent theme is that of
Mozart’s late opera La clemenza di Tito, which is, he
As important for Sellars as the new music in the festival
believes, ‘about breaking cycles of violence, and the rule
are the extraordinary new films that perform a unique
of mercy’. As Adams says of his own A Flowering Tree –
and vital role in making New Crowned Hope’s
in a comment that applies to the whole of New Crowned
aspirations of holding a global conversation an exciting
Hope – it ‘gives us a message of hope and reconciliation
reality. Illumination Films’ Simon Field and Keith Griffiths
so much in harmony with the visionary spiritual world that
served as executive producers for these new works,
was Mozart’s last year’.
created by film-makers from Chad, Paraguay, Thailand,
Taiwan, Indonesia and Iraq, plus a new short film from Peter Culshaw © 2007
South Africa. While the suggestion was to deal with
‘Mozartian’ themes, the directors were given total
freedom and their creations reveal a multiplicity of styles.
These range from the minimalism of Paz Encina’s
remarkable Hamaca Paraguaya, the first Paraguayan-
shot 35mm film for three decades (the last was a
historical apologia ordered by dictator Alfredo
Stroessner), to the allusive dream-world – set in a hospital
– of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a
Century, from the revenge tragedy of Mahamat-Saleh
Haroun’s Dry Season to the black comedy of Tsai Ming-
Liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone. Bahman Ghobadi’s
Half Moon explores the consequences of war on conflict-
torn communities in Kurdistan. Garin Nugroho’s
staggering Opera Jawa – played out on the beaches
and temples of Java, and entirely sung as a gamelan
opera – is a reinterpretation of the Hindu epic, the
Ramayana, but with direct contemporary references.
Together, all these films send us vivid and richly imagined
messages from the wider world, as far removed from the
contrived sound-bite distortions of the news media as is
possible.
5
New Crowned Hope
La Passion de Simone
Notes by the composer and the librettist
I have been reading Simone Weil’s writings since my
youth. The Finnish translation of her book Gravity and
Grace was one of the few things I packed into my
suitcase when I travelled to Germany in 1981 to continue
my studies in composition. Later, I began to read her
writings in the original French and also learnt more
about her life.
The combination of Weil’s severe asceticism and her
passionate quest for truth has appealed to me ever since
I first read her thoughts. La Passion de Simone – an
oratorio for solo soprano, choir, orchestra and
electronics – was specifically the result of collaboration
with Amin Maalouf and Peter Sellars; together we chose
the different parts of Weil’s work and life for the libretto
before I began composing. Whereas I have always been
fascinated by Simone’s striving for abstract
(mathematical) and spiritual-intellectual goals, Peter is
interested in her social awareness and political activities.
Amin brought out the gaping discrepancy between her
At the age of 34, between the ages of Jesus and Mozart,
a young woman decided to leave this world. The time
was August 1943, and humanity had just reached a
summit of barbarity. Simone Weil passed away without a
sound, as if by silent protest, in the anonymity of a small
English hospital. Her choice to die speaks to us of her
rejection of any form of submission – to violence and
hate, to Nazism and Stalinism, but also to a
dehumanising industrial society that deprives individuals
of their substance and leads them into nothingness.
Simone’s writings, most of which were published after
her death, are an attempt to find a way out of this
Notes
Simone Weil
philosophy and her life, showing the fate of the frail
human being amongst great ideas. In addition to Simone
Weil’s life and ideas, many general questions of human
existence are presented in Amin’s text.
La Passion consists of 15 stations. The idea for the form of
the text and the entire work came from the Passion play
tradition. This outer form is, however, the only similarity to
the traditional oratorio, at least in my opinion. The 15
movements are different in character and structure, and
they shed light on different moments in Simone Weil’s life
and interpret some of her ideas. The soprano has the
crucial role of the narrator. Weil’s own texts are presented
in the electronics surrounding the audience. The choir
and orchestra create the world in which live both the
soprano part and the spoken words in the electronic part.
La Passion de Simone is dedicated to my children Alex
and Aliisa.
Kaija Saariaho © 2006, translated by Ekhart Georgi
nothingness. Her passion is a discreet but powerful
signpost in our misguided world.
Amin Maalouf © 2006
The use in Amin Maalouf’s text of excerpts from the
following writings of Simone Weil is with the permission of
the two publishers, Editions Gallimard and Editions Plon:
Leçons de philosophie © Plon, 1950; La pesanteur et la
grâce © Plon, 1950; La connaisance surnaturelle ©
Editions Gallimard, 1950; Ecrits historiques et politiques ©
Editions Gallimard, 1950; Œuvres complètes, VI/3 (Cahiers
février 1942 – juin 1942) © Editions Gallimard, 1998.
7
Notes
The Depths of Existence
An introduction to La Passion de Simone
‘My music is my means of approaching the divine,’ says
Kaija Saariaho, ‘and my music is my meditation. I am
really looking into the depths of our existence, but I
cannot really speak about it.’
A passionate fighter for freedom with high ethical
standards applied to humanity is at the centre of
Saariaho’s oratorio La Passion de Simone: Simone Weil,
who was born in Paris in 1909 and died near London in
1943. Weil was convinced that ‘God created the world
through love and for love’. With her attempts to give
tangible shape to this love in her life, she tested the limits
of her own capacities, those of society, of life, ultimately
finding release only in death. But her ideals were and
are full of incandescent energy.
Already as a young girl, Saariaho was fascinated by the
writings of Simone Weil. When she moved to Freiburg im
Breisgau in the 1980s to continue her composition studies
with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber, one of the few
things she packed into her suitcase was the French
philosopher’s book Gravity and Grace (La pesanteur et
la grâce). An enigmatic title, an enigmatic woman. A
book composed of hundreds of aphorisms structured
into thematic sections, such as ‘The Self’, ‘Idolatry’, ‘The
Impossible’, ‘Chance’ or ‘The Mysticism of Work’.
Saariaho never wanted to compose an opera. It was
only when she saw the Peter Sellars production of
Mozart’s Don Giovanni set in the present-day Bronx that
she began to think about telling a story in music. Thus the
idea for L’Amour de loin (‘Love from Afar’) was born, an
opera based on a text by Jaufré Rudel, one of the great
12th-century troubadours. This work was commissioned
by the Salzburg Festival and premiered in 2000, directed
by Sellars. Since then, the opera has been performed to
great acclaim all over the world (including at the
Barbican in 2002). Six years later, it was followed by
8
New Crowned Hope
Kaija Saariaho
Saariaho’s second opera, Adriana Mater (which comes
to the Barbican in April), about a woman raped during a
war, whose son swears to take revenge on his father –
but when he meets the man, now old and blind, he
forgives him out of inexplicable compassion.
While working on L’Amour de loin, Saariaho was
surprised to find Peter Sellars quoting texts by Simone
Weil during the rehearsals. For the first time, she had
found somebody to discuss the philosopher with. Their
talks about Weil became gradually more intense. The
wish expressed by Sellars to collaborate on a piece
about Weil was tempting, as their co-operation on the
two previous operas had added a new dimension to the
composer’s artistic output.
Saariaho accepted the commission to compose a work
about Simone Weil but was still busy with Adriana Mater
and could not imagine following it up with another full-
length opera. Thus she asked for a sparse text that
should not be a narrative. Neither should the new work
become a biographical opera about this half-forgotten
fighter. Saariaho knew, ‘In abstraction I can meet her
concerns better!’
The close co-operation of Sellars, Saariaho and the
Paris-based Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf (librettist for
both Saariaho’s earlier operas) led to the draft of an
oratorio ‘in 15 stations’ with the title of La Passion de
Simone. The composer was fascinated by Weil’s interest
in mathematics, her aphorisms, her thoughts on the
world and human existence in general; Sellars mainly
admired her social awareness, her political engagement
and her metaphysics; while Maalouf was moved by the
painful tensions between her philosophy and her life.
These approaches were reduced to their essence, the
quintessence of a life, the question of why Weil
committed suicide by starving herself to death. And was
New Crowned Hope
it a suicide or an inexplicable act of compassion?
What makes Kaija Saariaho unique in the world of new
music, and one of the most frequently performed of
modern composers, is the impressive wealth of colours in
her musical language, her unerring ability to find novel
tone-colours in the interplay of instruments and to create
sound-spaces that captivate audiences.
It was Paavo Heininen, her first composition teacher at
the Helsinki Sibelius Academy, who introduced her to
musical tradition and showed her ways to systematically
develop her own, unique approach. In this, his
rigorousness and relentless pressure to reduce core
material to its essence proved most useful to her.
Further strong impulses were provided by literature.
Already as a child, Saariaho found it easy to become
engrossed in novels. Amusedly, she recalls how her
parents began to worry about her when she took up
reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment at the age
of 10. For her, particularly significant figures for the rich
imagery she draws from literature include Russian movie
director Andrey Tarkovsky and French poet Saint-John
Perse.
Nature and its immense wealth of phenomena constitute
another inexhaustible inspiration for Saariaho, who tries
to analyse their innumerable aspects. She is extremely
interested in natural-scientific phenomena. With its ideas
concerning the organisation of growth, the essay Entre le
crystal et la fumée (‘Between the Crystal and the Smoke’)
by Henri Atlan inspired her important two-part
orchestral work Du cristal … à la fumée.
Saariaho also views works of visual art as living
organisms and finds that ‘every detail reveals the true,
innermost nature of an artwork’. In her first orchestral
composition Verblendungen, the course of a brushstroke
Notes
was chosen to determine the form of her music. The
colourful use of the brush and the dynamic stroke that
becomes visible through lines trailing into empty space
while highlighting the untouched, white areas as motion
became her object of study. In creating her string quartet
Nymphéa, Saariaho reflected on the water-lilies so
emblematic of French painter Claude Monet. She looked
at the paintings as a whole and at the same time
reflected on the act of painting per se, the very moment
that had motivated the impressionist. As if scrutinising
them through a microscope and yet with the eyes of an
artist, Saariaho observed tiny details, such as the curving
lines of leaves, and thus revealed the beauty of the work,
communicated through the performance of her music.
In 1981/82, her scientific curiosity, strong interest in the
work of the French spectralists and love of unconditional
precision brought Saariaho to IRCAM. This ‘institute for
music/acoustic research and co-ordination’ founded by
Pierre Boulez in Paris offered her an opportunity to
engage in an intensive study of computer analysis and
electronics and to use them as instruments. This disclosed
new tone-colours to Saariaho and at the same time
freed her to put electronics and computers – precisely
like any other instrument – at the service of her art.
Yet the natural sound of the instrument and the human
being creating it remain at the core of all Saariaho’s
works. She is discovering more and more intensive and
differentiated palettes for her instruments, above all flute
and cello. Her tonal colour-mixes combined with her way
of thinking in harmonies are unique.
In addition, sound is extended into the audience, i.e.
neither the distance from nor the proximity to the listeners
is left to chance. The rules of natural growth become
constituting parameters of musical/compositional
structures. Passionately and yet coolly and calculatedly,
9
Notes New Crowned Hope

Saariaho develops microscopic interior views of sounds; Saariaho and choreographer Carolyn Carlson gave a
tones can evolve into sound-spaces whose boundaries, lot of thought to ‘transcendence’ and ‘transformation’.
like those of clouds, progress towards the infinite. Her
With her music, Saariaho enters new dimensions, and yet
increasingly strong sense of the physicality of music
the voyage to the unknown to which she lures her
endows the sounds with a natural grounding.
audience seems strangely familiar right from the first
In her aphorisms, Simone Weil writes (in Gravity and moment. Saariaho communicates her concerns in a
Grace), ‘Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain language that goes beyond words. The strong effect of
permission to pass right to the soul.’ her music has sometimes inspired misconceptions,
although Saariaho understands this reaction: ‘People
The concept of morphing – a cinematic term – lends itself
often think that my music is too emotional, too romantic,
to conveying the manner in which Saariaho designs
but I think that we have many different cultures here in
transitions from breath to instrumental sound, from noise
Europe. I don’t think that wanting to invest your art with
to tone. She is particularly attracted by the combination
your emotions cheapens it. Rather, art in my opinion
of apparently irreconcilable opposites.
always has an emotional background, and if you want to
For Saariaho, the human voice has become the strongest hide this completely, you’ve got a big problem, I believe.’
instrument. The composer is a great admirer of American
In Simone Weil, Saariaho has essentially encountered a
soprano Dawn Upshaw, whose singing blends delicacy
fundamental concept informing her own work: ‘We must
and power, gentleness and strength. The aura of the
become more and more aware of our planet, of our
voice, its colouring and intensity disclose dimensions
history, of what it means to be human. We can measure
unattainable by words. Upshaw enabled Saariaho to
intelligence quotients, but today we’re more concerned
explore new spaces, which resulted in the 1996
with emotional intelligence, with understanding that the
composition Château de l’âme. The title is inspired by a
sources of human existence lie here, and it would be
work by the Spanish Christian mystic St Theresa of Avila
crazy for any artist not to be aware of that.’
(Interior Castle from 1577). Saariaho herself chose lyrics
from the ancient Egyptian and Hindu traditions: two texts The yardstick applied by Simone Weil to music is high:
on passionate, human love between a couple, one song ‘When human music in its greatest purity pierces our soul,
about the love of our earth, and two songs about a this [the word of God] is what we hear through it. When
mother’s love. ‘Then I found that title, and I thought of the we have learnt to hear the silence, this is what we grasp,
“Interior Castle”, and that’s love,’ Saariaho remembers. more distinctly, through it.’
‘That was also important in preparing for the opera.’ This
Note by Margarete Zander
idea was in a way continued in the oratorio.
reprinted from the programme book for the 2006 New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna, by
As a parallel to Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone and its kind permission of Wiener Festwochen

journey into the world of the French mystic, we should

also consider her 1991 ballet score Maa, which discloses 'La Passion de Simone' is performed by arrangement with
another approach to the new work. In creating the music, Chester Music Limited.
10
New Crowned Hope About the performers

Peter Sellars director Dawn Upshaw soprano

Soprano Dawn Upshaw has
Visionary theatre, opera and
achieved international celebrity
festival director Peter Sellars is
as a singer of opera and concert
one of the most renowned and
repertoire ranging from the
innovative forces in the
sacred works of Bach to the
performing arts today. Whether it
freshest sounds of today. Her
is Mozart, Handel, Shakespeare,
acclaimed performances on the
Sophocles or the 16th-century
opera stage comprise the great
Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu,
Mozart roles as well as modern
his ground-breaking interpretations of classic works strike
works by Stravinsky, Poulenc and Messiaen. From
a universal chord with audiences, engaging with
Salzburg, Glyndebourne and Paris to the Metropolitan
contemporary social and political issues. He has staged
Opera, New York, where she began her career in 1984
operas at the Chicago Lyric Opera, the Glyndebourne
and has sung nearly 300 performances, Dawn Upshaw
Festival, the Netherlands Opera, the Opéra National de
has also championed numerous new works created for
Paris, the Salzburg Festival and the San Francisco Opera,
her, including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the
among others, establishing a reputation for bringing
Grawemeyer Award-winning L’Amour de loin by Kaija
20th-century and contemporary operas to the stage,
Saariaho; John Adams’s nativity oratorio El Niño; and
including works by Messiaen, Hindemith and Ligeti. He
Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and
has guided the creation of new works by Kaija Saariaho,
song-cycle Ayre.
Osvaldo Golijov and Tan Dun that have expanded the
repertoire of modern opera and has been a driving force This season Dawn Upshaw reprises her celebrated
in the creation of many new works with longtime portrayal of Margarita Xirgu in Ainadamar with the
collaborator John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Chicago Symphony, the Opera Company of Boston and
Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic and, most at the Barbican Centre. She tours North America in Ayre
recently, A Flowering Tree (which premiered in Vienna in with Eighth Blackbird, and in recital with pianist Gilbert
November 2006 and concludes the Barbican’s New Kalish. She begins a three-year appointment as Artist
Crowned Hope series next month). His recent production Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, with whom
of Euripides’s The Children of Herakles focused on she sings Schubert at Carnegie Hall.
contemporary immigration and refugee issues and
A four-time Grammy Award-winner, Dawn Upshaw is
experience.
featured on more than 50 recordings, including the
Peter Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including million-selling Symphony No.3 by Henryk Górecki. She
the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals, the 2002 began her career as a member of the Metropolitan
Adelaide Festival in Australia, the 2003 Venice Biennale Opera Young Artists Development Program, and now
International Festival of Theatre and the 2006 New serves as Artistic Director of the Bard College
Crowned Hope festival, held in Vienna last autumn for Conservatory Graduate Program in Vocal Arts, a new
the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, highlights of training program for young singers.
which are now being presented at the Barbican this
month and next. He is a professor in the department of
World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, a resident curator of
the Telluride Film Festival, the recipient of a MacArthur
Fellowship and the Erasmus Prize, and was recently
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

11
About the performers
Michael Schumacher dancer
Michael Schumacher has been a
member of Ballet Frankfurt,
Twyla Tharp Dance, the Feld
Ballet and the Pretty Ugly Dance
Company. Schumacher has
appeared in several Peter Sellars
productions: Bijbelse Stukken,
Peony Pavilion, El Niño, Bach
Cantatas and the Vienna premiere of La Passion de
Simone. He has also been featured in productions of
Cora Bos-Kroese, Dana Caspersen, Anouk van Dijk,
Mark Haim, Chico Katsube and Paul Selwyn Norton.
Michael Schumacher began dancing in musical theatre
productions in his hometown of Lewiston, Idaho. After
moving to New York, he received a BFA in Dance from
the Juilliard School. He continues to perform with
Magpie Music Dance Company and conducts
workshops in movement analysis and improvisation
techniques worldwide. He currently resides in
Amsterdam.
12
New Crowned Hope
Robert Spano conductor
Music Director of the Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra, Robert
Spano has conducted the
greatest orchestras of North
America, including those in
Chicago, Cleveland,
Philadelphia, Boston, New York,
Saint Louis, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Houston, Minnesota, Washington DC,
Pittsburgh, Toronto and Montreal. Overseas he has led
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra
Filarmonica della Scala, Czech Philharmonic, Frankfurt
Radio Symphony Orchestra,
BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, New Japan
Philharmonic and Tonhalle Orchester. He has conducted
the Chicago, Houston and Santa Fe opera companies,
as well as the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Welsh
National Opera. In August 2005 he conducted Wagner’s
Der Ring des Nibelungen at Seattle Opera, and returns
for the cycle in 2009. With a discography of nine critically
acclaimed recordings for Telarc and Deutsche
Grammophon made over six years, Robert Spano has
won six Grammy Awards.
Robert Spano was Artistic Director of the Ojai Festival in
2006, Director of the Festival of Contemporary Music at
the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music
Center in 2003 and 2004, and from 1996 to 2004 was
Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Head of the
Conducting Fellowship Program at Tanglewood Music
Center from 1998 to 2002, he has served on the faculties
of Bowling Green State University, Curtis Institute and
Oberlin Conservatory. Robert Spano lives in Atlanta.
New Crowned Hope About the performers

Martin Pakledinaz costume design James F. Ingalls lighting design

Martin Pakledinaz has designed costumes for theatre, James F. Ingalls most recently designed Mark Morris’s
opera and dance. He collaborated with Peter Sellars and Mozart Dances, the opening work in the Barbican’s
Kaija Saariaho on the productions of her first two operas, current New Crowned Hope series. Other work for Mark
L’Amour de loin (Salzburg, Paris Châtelet, Sante Fe, Morris includes Sylvia, Sandpaper Ballet, Maelstrom
Helsinki) and Adriana Mater (Paris Bastille). He has often and Pacific (San Francisco Ballet); Platée (Royal Opera
designed for Mark Morris, including Mozart Dances, the House, Covent Garden and New York City Opera);
opening work in the Barbican’s current New Crowned L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Dido & Aeneas
Hope series. and The Hard Nut (Mark Morris Dance Group); Ein Herz
(Paris Opéra Ballet); the initial White Oak Project tour;
Work in New York includes the Broadway productions of
and King Arthur (English National Opera). For Merce
The Pirate Queen, The Pajama Game, The Trip to
Cunningham Dance Company he designed Fluid Canvas
Bountiful, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Wonderful Town,
and Split Sides with music by Sigur Ros and Radiohead.
Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, Kiss Me, Kate, The Life
At the Metropolitan Opera, New York, he has designed
and Gypsy (with Patti Lupone), as well as Rodelinda and
An American Tragedy, Salome, Benvenuto Cellini, The
Lucia di Lammermoor for the Metropolitan Opera, and
Gambler, War & Peace and Wozzeck. Recent projects at
Xerxes and other operas for the New York City Opera.
Lincoln Center include Zaide and Ainadamar, both
He has worked with the ballet companies of Seattle,
directed by Peter Sellars. He often collaborates with Saint
Boston and San Francisco, and the White Oak Dance
Joseph Ballet in Santa Ana, California.
Project.
Future projects include Grease on Broadway and
Iphigénie en Tauride in a co-production between the
Seattle and Metropolitan operas.

Additional production credits

Clare Whistler associate director
Betsy Ayer production stage manager
Kate Stevens rehearsal accompanist
David Sheppard/Sound Intermedia sound design

Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance. In accordance with the
requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing in any gangway is not permitted. No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in the
auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall.
Programme edited by Mark Pappenheim, artwork by Jane Denton; printed by Vitesse London; advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)

13
About the performers New Crowned Hope

Sopranos Tenors
London Voices Tarsha Cole Russell Ablewhite
London Voices have been a high-class professional Ann de Renais Simon Haynes
choral force for over 30 years. They have appeared on Cheryl Enever Andrew Hewitt
over 200 record albums and several major film Rachel Godsill Norbert Meyn
Cathy Heller Jones Stephen Miles
soundtracks, including the first three Harry Potter films, Carys Lloyd Roberts Gareth Roberts
the last three Star Wars movies and the Lord of the Rings Wendy Nieper Andrew Walters
trilogy. With their director Terry Edwards (Chorus Director Nicola Ogborn Andrew Friedhoff
at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1991 to Rosalind Waters
2004) they have premiered several significant works by Mary Wiegold Basses
composers including John Adams, Luciano Berio, Heinz Lindsay Benson
Holliger, György Ligeti, Henri Pousseur and Kaija Altos Richard Fallas
Saariaho. London Voices have contributed to recital discs Tamsin Dalley Gavin Horsley
by many of the world’s leading artists, including Angela Karen Fodor Ronald Nairne
Gheorghiu, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti and Bryn Susan Marrs John Milne
Olivia Maffett Andrew McWilliams
Terfel. They have also sung for distinguished conductors, Cathy Parkin Paul Vincent
including the late Georg Solti, Christoph von Dohnányi, Judy Rees Gerald White
Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Antonio Pappano, Sir Helen Templeton Matthew White
Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Andrew O’Sullivan Simon Whiteley
David Sheringham

14
New Crowned Hope About the performers

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is the
resident orchestra of Symphony Hall, Birmingham, and
one of the world’s foremost symphonic ensembles,
having worked with many leading international
conductors since its inaugural concert in 1920,
conducted by Sir Edward Elgar. It established itself as a
major force during its 18-year association with Sir Simon
Rattle, and has continued to prosper under the Finnish
conductor Sakari Oramo, who was appointed Principal
Conductor in 1998 and Music Director in 1999. Its
performances are attended by more than 300,000
people each year, and heard and seen by many millions
more through its regular radio and TV appearances and
large discography. In constant demand to perform all
over the world, the CBSO also makes regular
appearances at the BBC Proms and the Aldeburgh
Festival. Julian Anderson is the orchestra’s Composer-in-
Association, a post previously occupied by Mark-
Anthony Turnage and Judith Weir, among others. While
a busy education department co-ordinates an extensive
programme of work with schools and in the local
community, the orchestra runs a chamber music series at
CBSO Centre and four ‘unpaid professional’ choruses
that are regularly in demand to perform with leading
orchestras and musical groups. Recently it founded a
youth orchestra, which has recruited the best young
musicians aged 14 to 21 from the East and West
Midlands regions.

First Violin Viola Flute Trumpet

Laurence Jackson Kinga Maria Roesler Marie-Christine Zupancic Jonathan Holland
Robert Heard Christopher Yates Colin Lilley Wes Warren
Alison Kelly Eugen Popescu
Colin Twigg Michael Jenkinson Piccolo Trombone
Jane Sidebottom Angela Swanson Andrew Lane Andrew Cole
Sheila Clarke Ella Brinch Anthony Howe
Ruth Lawrence Carol Millward Oboe
Julia Beisswanger Elizabeth Fryer John Crossman Tuba
Felipe Rodriguez-Garcia Ulf Aberg Karen O’Connor Gary McGibbon
Robert Bilson Anna Smith
David Gregory Clarinet Timpani
Mark Robinson Cello Dmitry Rasul-Kareyev Peter Hill
Helen Griffiths Ulrich Heinen Joanna Patton
Richard Leaver Richard Jenkinson Percussion
Kate Setterfield Bassoon Huw Ceredig
Second Violin David Russell Christopher Gunia James Strebing
Briony Shaw Helen Edgar Margaret Cookhorn Cliff Pick
Michael Seal Jacqueline Tyler Andrew Herbert
Dianne Youngman Catherine Ardagh-Walter Horn Matthew Green
David Arlan Ian Ludford Elspeth Dutch Julian Wolstencroft
Brian Horgan Peter Currie
Heather Bradshaw Bass Mark Phillips Harp
Austin Rowlands John Tattersdill Peter Dyson Robert Johnston
Byron Parish Charles Wall Martin Wright
Amy Marshall Thomas Millar Celesta
Gabriel Dyker Mark Doust Alistair Young
Deborah White Sally Morgan
Imogen Richards Julian Walters
15