

Adams: Girls of the Golden West (2-CD)
Price: $32.00 Members: $25.60
Item: 075597900484
Description
Adams: Girls of the Golden West (2-CD)
Composer: John Adams
Artists: Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, Ryan McKinny, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Conductor: John Adams
Number of Discs: 2
Label: Nonesuch
Release Date: February 28, 2024
Girls of the Golden West is a California opera, telling the story of the Gold Rush not through familiar time-worn myth, but in the words and deeds of real people: in the words of Mark Twain, “the strangest population, the finest population... whoever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.”
Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars drew from original sources from the Gold Rush era – letters, journals, newspaper articles, and familiar song lyrics – to create the libretto. The composer leads the LA Phil in this recording made in Disney Hall.
The Los Angeles Times called the opera “glorious and compelling.” Mark Swed wrote, “The Disney concert performance... went straight for the gut.”
In the recording’s liner note, Jake Wilder-Smith adds, “Adams’ score [highlights] the profane humor and mawkish sentimentality of the Gold Rush songs that he incorporates throughout the opera, which rise to almost sublime heights in his high-octane and inventive settings of the songs. During the Gold Rush, these lyrics were sung to the tune of recycled melodies from Stephen Foster standbys like ‘Camptown Races’ or ‘Oh! Susanna.’ Now, set anew to music that is pure, unadulterated Adams, they release a static charge long dormant within them; the resulting sparks and flares contribute to the opera’s electric energy.”
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