Continuing my weekly feature, after seeing last week the great recent Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus: Here's LvB's haunting "Coriolan Overture." Amid cries for war a mother pleads with son.
1 comment:
Laurence Glavin
said...
Technically, Beethoven's overture was associated with a contemporary play "Coriolan" by Heinrich Joseph von Collin who used Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" as a springboard to his own play. But LvB had a lifelong interest in Shakespeare, and had considered composing an opera on a Shakespearian subject had he lived a few more years. The struggle to get "Fidelio" just right took a lot out of him so he probably decided to put operatic composition on the back burner!
1 comment:
Technically, Beethoven's overture was associated with a contemporary play "Coriolan" by Heinrich Joseph von Collin who used Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" as a springboard to his own play. But LvB had a lifelong interest in Shakespeare, and had considered composing an opera on a Shakespearian subject had he lived a few more years. The struggle to get "Fidelio" just right took a lot out of him so he probably decided to put operatic composition on the back burner!
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