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Gawain (opera)

Gawain is an opera with music by Harrison Birtwistle to a libretto by David Harsent. The story is based on the Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The opera was a commission from the Royal Opera House, London, where it was first performed on 30 May 1991.[1][2] Rhian Samuel has published a detailed analysis of the opera.[3] Birtwistle revised it in 1994, and the premiere of the revised version was given at the Royal Opera House on 20 April 1994.[4]

Gawain

English

30 May 1991 (1991-05-30)

Music[edit]

The plot of Gawain is ideally suited to Birtwistle's approach to musical structure. The repetitious structure of events can be paralleled with a repetitious musical structure. Thus the three hunts in Act 2 use the same musical material, as do the three seductions. The music is varied and adapted every time it is heard, but inner coherence is easily established. The synopsis also indicates many points where recurring motifs are heard: trios of door knocks; the return to the Arthurian court at the end of the opera with the same mood of boredom seen at the beginning; the members of the court gradually recovering from Gawain the items they gave him at the end of act 1. Thus, though the opera is not written with many explicit numbers (i.e. the arias and ensemble pieces characteristic of Classical opera), nor with strongly defined leitmotif in the style of Wagner, there is an overall unity of musical material. There are many occasions when one character will simply repeat one line of text always set it to the same melodic phrase, but this is not the same as using a leitmotif. It does, however, fit well with Birtwistle's standard style of continual variation in the midst of repetition.


The conductor Elgar Howarth has arranged the orchestral suite Gawain's Journey from music in the opera.[5]

King Arthur's half-sister (soprano)

Morgan Le Fay

Lady de Hautdesert, wife of Bertilak ()

mezzo-soprano

king (tenor)

Arthur

Arthur's wife (soprano)

Guinevere

A Fool ()

baritone

a knight of King Arthur's Court, Gawain's brother

Agravain

a knight of King Arthur's Court, Gawain's brother

Ywain

a knight of King Arthur's Court, (baritone)

Gawain

Bishop Baldwin ()

countertenor

a knight

Bedevere

The /Bertilak de Hautdesert (bass)

Green Knight

1994 revision, recorded live by on 20 April 1994, issued in 1996 by Collins Classics (70412), reissued in 2014 by NMC Recordings (NMC D200): François Le Roux (baritone), Marie Angel (soprano), Anne Howells (mezzo-soprano), Richard Greager (tenor), Penelope Walmsley-Clark (soprano), Omar Ebrahim (baritone), Alan Ewing (bass), John Marsden (tenor), Kevin Smith (countertenor), John Tomlinson (bass-baritone), Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Elgar Howarth (conductor)

BBC Radio 3