Pentatone, together with Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose, releases the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, an opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo, in September 2023.
A Tale of Ecstasy and Ruin
Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Gil Rose present the world-premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role.
Multi-award winning composer John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. The Pentatone recording of The Ghost of Versailles, released in 2016, won two Grammy Awards. Composer-librettist Mark Adamo’s four previous operas, including Little Women (1998) have been staged, recorded, and broadcast hundreds of times on five continents. Under the leadership of conductor Gil Rose, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has become an unsurpassed advocate for 20th and 21st century American music; they make their Pentatone debut with The Lord of Cries.
“Dracula promises that, no matter how deliciously we’ll let them scare us for a time, our animal urges can be, literally, compartmentalized and slain with the right stake to the heart. The Bacchae counters that these urges will always be with us — that they areus — and all we can do is give them some of what they want, lest they rebel and take all we have. This insight convinced me that this opera needed a civilized, triadic, “surface” score through which you could hear, more and more, an obsessive, ecstatic music of truth. ”
John Corigliano“When researching another opera libretto I adapted from Greek sources, I came across the quote that ‘all classicism is neo-classicism;’ meaning that, from earliest times, the past, in the theatre, has always been a mask we wear to speak more clearly about the present. I can’t summarize more succinctly the method, and the goal, of ‘The Lord of Cries’.”
Mark Adamo
Digital Release Date: 8 September 2023
Physical Release: AUGUST 2023
Released as 2 CD and in digital formats for streaming and high-resolution downloads.
