Just read in a New York Review article that Italian novelist Italo Calvino after an opera project with composer Luciano Berio - Un Re in ascolto (which I have heard) - found him "confused and stuck in the avant-garde movement of 20 years ago". This leads me naturally to installment 5 of my personal summer series "Operas you never heard (of)", as yesterday I listened to - of all possible things - Berio's Cronaca del luogo.
The world premiere took place in Salzburg 1999 with Hildegard Behrens and Swedish baritone Urban Malmberg among others. It's curiously static in its brilliant but overworked fireworks of sound, full of obviously unnecessary difficulties and probably absolutely uninteresting to revive. Perhaps Calvino was right? Berio wrote more worthwhile things, e.g. his (mainly faked) folksong arrangements, here in a spirited performance with ex-wife Cathy Berberian http://youtu.be/A05OvjX3h88
Comments