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Opera on 3

Music: Classical: Opera

Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Thomas Ades's The Exterminating Angel

Performances & Events

Music: Classical

A scene from Ades's The Exterminating Angel

27/05/2017

Thomas Ades's The Exterminating Angel

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Thomas Ades's The Exterminating Angel

From the Royal Opera House, Thomas Ades conducts his opera The Exterminating Angel.

From the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, Thomas Ades conducts a performance of his own new opera The Exterminating Angel, based on Luis Bunuel's surrealist film.

Tom Service presents Thomas Adès's new opera from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Based on an iconic film by Buñuel, the plot concerns a group of people who are invited to a post-opera dinner. When it's time to leave they find that they can't, despite there being nothing physical stopping them. The social niceties quickly break down as the guests begin to panic, and they have a death and a suicide pact on their hands. Will they work out how to defeat The Exterminating Angel and escape? 

Thomas Adès himself conducts a truly stellar line up of soloists including Anne Sofie von Otter, John Tomlinson, Thomas Allen, Christine Rice and Sally Matthews. Tom Service is joined in the box by music critic Fiona Maddocks to talk about Adès's unique soundworld including Wagner tubas, ondes martenot, and a lot of percussion. Plus the composer talks about the gestation of his new work and the singers discuss the challenges of the virtuoso writing. 

Leonora.....Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano) 
Blanca.....Christine Rice (mezzo-soprano) 
Nóbile.....Charles Workman (baritone) 
Lucía.....Amanda Echalaz (soprano) 
Raúl.....Frederic Antoun (tenor) 
Doctor.....John Tomlinson (bass) 
Roc.....Thomas Allen (baritone) 
Francisco.....Iestyn Davies (countertenor) 
Eduardo.....Ed Lyon (tenor) 
Leticia.....Audrey Luna (soprano) 
Silvia.....Sally Matthews (soprano) 
Beatriz.....Sophie Bevan (soprano) 
Lucas.....Hubert Francis (tenor) 
Enrique.....Thomas Atkins (tenor) 
Señor Russell.....Sten Byriel (bass) 
Colonel.....David Adam Moore (baritone) 
Julio.....Morgan Moody (bass-baritone) 
Pablo.....James Cleverton (baritone) 
Meni.....Elizabeth Atherton (soprano) 
Camila.....Anne Marie Gibbons (mezzo-soprano) 
Padre Sanson.....Wyn Pencarreg (baritone) 
Royal Opera House Chorus
Royal Opera House Orchestra
Thomas Adès (conductor).

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