Rovsing Olsen: Belisa.(Sound Recording Review)

[] Inderhaug, Dahl, Halling, Nielsen, Rorholm; Byriel; Vocal Arts Group Nova, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Veto. Notes, text and translation. DACAPO 8.26013

The story of a wealthy old man taking a young wife is a commedia dell'arte cliche long exploited in opera buffa, but Spanish playwright Garcia Lorca gave it a gruesome twist in his play Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su Jardin--the basis for Danish composer Paul Rovsing Olsen's terse chamber opera, Belisa.

In this version, which had its premiere at Copenhagen's Royal Theater on September 3, 1966, the flighty bride Belisa takes five lovers on her wedding night--not including her husband, Don Perlimplin, who awakens the next morning with horns on his head. Belisa is obsessed, however, with an elusive suitor in a red cloak who appears in her garden and sends her beautiful love letters. Only at the end--having fatally stabbed himself after concluding that Belisa will never love him--does Don Perlimplin reveal that he was the man in red who sent the letters that won her heart.

Composer Poul Rovsing Olsen (1922-82) was also a distinguished ethnomusicologist, expert in music of Arabian Gulf countries. In his original works, he fused an Eastern idiom with the sophisticated European techniques of his generation (including electronics) to produce here an accessible, singable score that maintains the flow and ...