Sir John Tomlinson, who has been striding the world’s opera stages for several decades, notably in the role of Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, has long been contemplating the role of Shakespeare’s Lear and sees parallels between the two characters. This new monodrama by John Casken affords him the opportunity to incarnate the aging, delusional king in a musical setting that incorporates Shakespeare’s text in the form of speech, Sprechstimme and singing.
Brünnhilde’s Dream is a sequence of words and music imagining the state of mind of Wotan’s favourite Valkyrie daughter as she lies on the rock, surrounded by fire, after the end of Die Walküre. Music by Wagner, Fanny Mendelssohn, Szymanowski, Berg, Schubert, Schoeck, Zemlinsky, Rebecca Clarke, Vilma von Webenau, Schumann and Johanna Müller-Hermann. Text by Barry Millington.
