Heggie: Woman, The Making Of (CD) – Lilian Farahani

Composer: Jake Heggie
Artists: Lilian Farahani, Maurice Lammerts van Bueren
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Zefir
CD Release Date: July 5, 2019

Soprano Lilian Farahani and pianist Maurice Lammerts van Bueren combine their love for the music of American composer Jake Heggie (b. 1961) with their passion for photography. This recording features their interpretation of Heggie’s compositions Eve-Song and At the Statue of Venus in both an auditory and visual way, by making an album with a corresponding photo booklet.

“The two women represented on this recording might not seem to have a lot in common, but the Biblical Eve and the contemporary Rose are sisters to the core. They are dealing with what I find most interesting in all the characters I explore through dramatic music: a transformative crisis of identity. Questioning their lot in life in a moment of intensely vulnerable reflection. What could be more human?” – Jake Heggie

Eve-Song was Heggie’s very first commission, written in 1995 for soprano Kristin Clayton on original texts by Philip Littell. At the Statue of Venus was composed 10 years later to a libretto by playwright Terrence McNally, and again premiered by Kristin Clayton. Not a song cycle, it is a real dramatic scena about a successful businesswoman waiting for a blind date in a museum, standing next to the goddess of love: the feminine ideal of Western culture. Old and new concepts of women and their roles crisscross through both works.

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