Deborah Polaski, Martin Homrich, Scott MacAllister, Roman Trekel, Wolfgang Koch, Sir John Tomlinson, Jacquelyn Wagner, Bettina Jensen, Maria Markina, Laurence Meikle, Coro Gulbenkian, Orquestra Gulbenkian, Jennifer Condon
Sappho, the last grand opera of Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-90), was written in her stone cottage on Mykonos in 1963. Never heard before this recording, Sappho reflects Glanville-Hicks’ fascination with the orient and folk music, encapturing the colours of ancient Greece, with a heroic brass fanfare and epic writing for chorus, haunting woodwind solos and shimmering percussion evoking the stillness of crystal island waters. Deborah Polaski, who creates the role of the disenchanted Sappho, describes it as ‘the kind of music that singers want to sing’. The libretto, based on Lawrence Durrell’s verse-play, incorporates fragments of Sappho’s own verse.
