International Release of Darkling, the CD
Released by Albany Records
Buy the CD at these locations:
Click Here to Download the Official Press Release
Listen to tracks from the CD Here:
Salvage of Coats
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They Will Not Ask
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Hamburg 1928 (My Ship Sets Sail)
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From a book-length poem to a multi-media experimental opera to its current incarnation as a CD, DARKLING gives a haunting portrayal of the emotions, terrors, and incalculable losses incurred during the period between the two World Wars and the Holocaust. Commissioned by American Opera Projects, DARKLING is based on Anna Rabinowitz’s Darkling: A Poem (Tupelo Press, 2001) set to original music by post- classical composer Stefan Weisman. DARKLING movingly evokes the memory of the Holocaust as well as the human cost of cataclysmic events through a fusion of avant- garde theater, opera, cutting-edge technology and poignant language.
What the critics said:
DARKLING OPERA
“BRAVE AND SENSITIVE”
“…captivating theatrical images. (Stefan Weisman's) music is personal, moody and skillfully wrought.”
— Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
“Let Darkling serve as a reminder that opera can also be what and where it is found. This is a profound, provocative piece of musical theater—one that I hope will occasion a great many opera lovers to stray from habitual paths. As specific as the context of Darkling may be, its message is ultimately universal.”
— Steve Smith, Night After Night
“…an intensely complicated work of art. Bravo to AOP for supporting such controversial and ultimately important work, and to the creative minds that fitted it all together in a thought-provoking way.”
— Megan Jenkins, Opera Today
“…it is an exercise of remembrance above all.”
— Heidi Waleson, Opera News
DARKLING CD
"…textured with vocal and string quartet sequences that smolder or gleam, Darkling is a memory
quest and testimonial to broken knowledge…Voices hover and parry, with Weisman’s arias
providing both tension and release…Darkling is deeply mindful work."
— Alan Lockwood, Time Out
"...engrossing…beautifully recorded…a compelling listen… a vivid and satisfying picture of a
challenging historical period."
— Alexandra Gardner, New Music Box
"Just when you think you’ve heard every angle possible on the Holocaust, along comes Stefan
Weisman’s chamber opera Darkling to gently—yet forcefully—illuminate another sorrowful corner.
…[Weisman’s] delicate and eclectic language tie[s] together Rabinowitz’s powerful fragments."
— Bruce Hodges, The Julliard Journal Online
BOOK
Darkling: A Poem
Tupelo Press, 2001
“This dense, unsettling volume makes a unique contribution to Holocaust literature.”
— Publishers Weekly
“…[a] daring book-length masterpiece…”
— Sharon Dolin, Jacket Magazine
“…not a book of poems, nor even a single long poem, but a single poetic gesture, a linguistic act…”
“ …an extraordinarily intense experiment in language and the emotional freighting of …lives”
— Bin Ramke, Boston Review
“…the power and vision of history and of personal redemption rise off the page in a breathless wall of language. It is a brilliant…approach [to] an enormous topic.”
— Bloomsbury Review
“It is also, defiantly, a profoundly hopeful book. Anything this lovingly and carefully constructed—foraged out of Nothingness—cannot help but amend, in some way, the lives it unravels.”
— John Olson, American Book Review
"In the most profound and prolific manner imaginable, Anna Rabinowitz's Darkling breaks the silence of history, breaking open the everlasting testaments of courage in a dark time. The energies released are energies of Delight. Rabinowitz teaches us that it is a Delight to hear, a Delight to read, and a Delight, in hearing and reading, to keep company with undestroyed souls. Indeed, Darkling is the ceremony of a great soul, and we must, we shall gladly attend it."
— Donald Revell, Editor, Colorado Review
For all inquiries please email us at info(at)operaprojects(dot)org
