To See The Invisible
Chamber Opera in one act. An Aldeburgh Festival commission and world premiere.
Listen again BBC Radio 3 Hear And Now Emily Howard, To See The Invisible
"eclectic; avant-garde and spectral … plenty to chew over and to raise hopes for Howard’s future work"
"Oddly compelling … Howard’s idiom has a cool confidence and clarity of its own"
"… it gets under the skin – a step into the future in Aldeburgh’s venerable tradition"
"Emily Howard’s imaginative score ensures that this zeitgeist work is entirely her own"
more press"Howard’s menacing use of percussion and grainy-textured instrumental writing, variously monochrome and lush, capture the atmosphere. Her evocative score embraces other composers: a lute song by John Dowland, sung in a brothel scene in which pleasure and pain are played out with clinical horror, and the opening of the trio Soave il Vento, from Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. In Howard’s reworking, it shifts to a noodling, candy-sweet marimba-dominated melody, representing a world of “warmth”. Cacti thrive and a couple indulge themselves in “bagels, cookies, muffins and cupcakes, lemon and poppy seed, toffee and blueberry or double choc-chip”. Try singing that."
"Pastel-perfect hell … Howard confidently and consistently makes her music run hot and cold, and it’s a discomforting, intriguing listen … ambitious, experimental, and leaving us plenty to ponder."
"Silverberg’s concept of a time when any emotion is outlawed was brought to vivid musical life … it has a Kafkaesque spookiness about it and should travel well if taken up elsewhere."
