Mavra/Pierrot Lunaire

As part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, the Jette Parker Young Artists present a mixed programme in the Linbury Theatre, bringing together Igor Stravinsky’s rarely performed Mavra, 100 years after its 1922 premiere, and Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 melodrama Pierrot Lunaire. Stravinsky’s one-act opera is based on a narrative poem by Pushkin, in which a Hussar disguises himself as a cook in an attempt to spend more time with his lover. Schoenberg’s formally wide-ranging, atonal score for Pierrot Lunaire, pre-dating the 12-tone technique for which he is celebrated, transforms into Sprechstimme the texts of poems by Albert Giraud on subjects ranging from love, sex and religion to violence, crime and blasphemy.

Mavra: performed in Russian with English surtitles. Pierrot Lunaire: performed in German with English surtitles