Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Duets of Love: Duet of Hope
2. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Duets of Love: Duet of Distance
3. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Duets of Love: Duet of Despair
4. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Magic: Song of Words
5. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Magic: Song of Arches
6. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Magic: Song of Tides
7. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Recitatives of Teaching: Recitative by Thought
8. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Recitatives of Teaching: Recitative by Rote
9. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Recitatives of Teaching: Recitative by Copy
10. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Arias of Prophesy: Aria of Achievement
11. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Arias of Prophesy: Aria of Potential
12. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Arias of Prophesy: Aria of Retaliation
13. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Screams of Passion: Scream of Fury
14. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Screams of Passion: Scream of Hate
15. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Screams of Passion: Scream of Pain
16. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Spoken Arguments; Argument in Asking
17. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Spoken Arguments; Argument in Pleading
18. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Spoken Arguments; Argument in Begging
19. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Cries of Memory: The Yawn
20. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Cries of Memory: The Sigh
21. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Cries of Memory: The Scream
22. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Conversations of Silence: The Spontaneous Remark
23. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Conversations of Silence: The Lost Innuendo
24. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Conversations of Silence: The Hopeless Demand
25. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Statements of Reason: The Seduction

Disc 2:

1. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Statements of Reason: The Explanation
2. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Statements of Reason: The Argument
3. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Whispers of Change: Whisper of Death
4. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Whispers of Change: Whisper of Birth
5. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Whispers of Change: Whisper of Eternity
6. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Failure: Failure in Life
7. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Failure: Failure in Movement
8. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Songs of Failure: Failure in Action
9. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Orphic Hymns: Hymn of Ecstasy
10. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Orphic Hymns: Hymn of Catharsis
11. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Orphic Hymns: Hymn of Secrecy
12. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Silent Soliloquys: Silence of Intrigue
13. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Silent Soliloquys: Silence of Neglect
14. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hysterical Arias: Aria of Bargain
15. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hysterical Arias: Aria of Incomprehension
16. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hysterical Arias: Aria of Nonsense
17. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Sentences of Religion: Sentence of Dogma
18. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Sentences of Religion: Sentence of Faith
19. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Sentences of Religion: Sentence of Doubt
20. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Shouts of Gratitude: Shout of Triumph

Disc 3:

1. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Shouts of Gratitude: Shout of Victory
2. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Shouts of Gratitude: Shout of Wonder
3. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hidden Trios: Trio of Tears
4. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hidden Trios: Trio of Invective
5. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Hidden Trios: Trio of Abandon
6. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Poems of Reminiscence: Poem of Miracles
7. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Poems of Reminiscence: Poem of Horror
8. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Poems of Reminiscence: Poem of Love
9. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Silences: Silence in Vow
10. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Silences: Silence in Message
11. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Silences: Silence in Mistake
12. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Mysteries: Enthusiasmos
13. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Mysteries: Katharsis
14. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Human Lies: Lie of Greed
15. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Human Lies: Lie of Subterfuge
16. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Human Lies: Lie of Self-deception
17. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Acts of Love: Act of Tenderness
18. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Acts of Love: Act of Seduction
19. The Mask of Orpheus, opera: 3 Acts of Love: Act of Orgy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #411003 in Music
• Released on: 1999-01-25
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: Box set

Amazon.com
This imposing score, from British composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, mixes electronic effects with traditional instruments and voices in a retelling of the Orpheus and Euridice legend. Birtwistle achieves greater dramatic breadth than the Monteverdi and Gluck versions--but it is highly splintered storytelling. Up to three different singers play a single character in a fearsomely complex libretto by Peter Zinovieff, printed here with eye-crossing diagrams of the opera's structure. Onstage, the piece may communicate on some intuitive level like Einstein on the Beach, but when heard and not seen, Orpheus can be as bewildering as blueprints to a hydrogen bomb. The music is unusually expansive for Birtwistle with long-breathed electronic bass lines. Momentous plot turns have an almost Wagnerian monumentality. But much else sounds like obscure noodling, and there's little theatrical heat, demanding far more of its listeners than it gives. --David Patrick Stearns

Customer Reviews

Astonishing, Amazing - a Masterpiece
Quite simply put, The Mask of Orpheus is not only one of the truly great operas of the twentieth century, but also one of the truly great masterpieces in 20th century music. At times gentle, at others violent, Mask is always lush.

Every note is amazing music. True, a little is lost since we're not able to actually see the opera - but the libretto is very extensive and those with any imagination whatsoever will be able to realize the piece in their own minds.

Birtwistle is on familiar territory here for those of you familiar with his other work: rituals, labyrinths, questions, quests, repetition, changes, examination, minute detail.

And for those of you not familiar with his music, this piece will take you on a totally remarkable ride. With each listen it astonishes me more and more.

As an aside, I bought this over a year ago but was going out of town, but I brought it along, first hearing it in the desert, in the middle of nowhere and was totally overwhelmed by what I heard - the love affair hasn't ended. Very much modern music, but as I said, always lush and astonishingly beautiful.

Do not under any circumstances miss out on this piece - I'm listening to the last act now and few operas have affected me in the same way, Wagner's Parsifal, Berg's Lulu and Luigi Nono's Prometeo being the others. Few operas work 100% - The Mask of Orpheus does. Birtwistle hooks you completely within the first 3 minutes of the piece, the end of the first track. Within a minute of the second track, he grabs you and doesn't let go. It is in every sense, a remarkable journey from a remarkable composer.

Birtwistle's Underworld
The Mask of Orpheus -- like HB's masterpiece The Triumph of Time -- is obsessed with ideas of procession and precession; the listener moves through a musical landscape that is itself in motion, constantly revealing different angles of its terrain -- usually with great vividness. In Orpheus, we add a dramatic dimension, treated in similar fashion. The myth is continually shattered and reassembled around us, recited and sung, mimed, finally collapsing into another, wholly invented language in the third act. What gives this opera its peculiar power is the immensity, and to some extent the insanity, of its design. As drama it can be overlong and not entirely involving (especially without a visual element), but as landscape it creates a singular experience -- interludes for synthesizers evoke the presence of ancient times and Otherness (and are alone worth the price of the CD); the second act, with its metaphorical/literal depiction of the arches of the Underworld, becomes an echo chamber of myth, and a dwelling place; while the third act, with its invented language, is less opera than drug trip, reminiscent of Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker.

Mask(s) of Orpheus
I am a huge fan of Birtwistle and an opera buff in general, which means I'd like to give a whole-heartedly positive response to this work, but I do have some qualms. First off, the libretto is simply too austere for its own good. It is always fun to incorporate archetypal imagery into a new approach to mythic topics, but when EVERYTHING represents something else, it's impossible to get one's head around it. That is especially true of the 17 arches, and the ordering of 100+ set pieces in threes. The opera world has known works of incredible formal construction (Berg's operas, and Birtwistle's own Punch and Judy, for example) that did not require one's study to comprehend the work at hand. Berg even wished that the structures of Wozzeck and Lulu would be ignored. My only other qualm is that some of the electro-acoustic music drones to some length without any relief. (I have the same complaint about what little I have heard of Stockhausen's Licht. Luckily, this work does not suffer from the main conceit of Licht: an egocentric mythologizing of the composer's own autobiography. On the other hand, this work is certainly tremendously unique. If mind-bending post-modern music drama sounds delicious to you, this should provide hours of amusement and consternation. And perhaps I will stumble upon the key to this ambitious but frustrating opera. The performances and sound quality are first-rate, and the libretti and notes, while giving Finnegans Wake a run for its money in terms of comprehensibility, are certainly in great abundance. Happy listening.