Barbican,London
A fascinating stage collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe revived the work of a tarnished French composer, whose dramatic score deserves comparison with Debussy and RavelAs an offering for Shakespeare 400, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo joined forces with actors from Shakespeare’s Globe to perform an abridgement of Antony and Cleopatra,directed by Iqbal Khan, with the incidental music Florent Schmitt composed for the 1920 premiere of André Gide’s translation of the play.
Schmitt is a difficult figure, or his reputation tarnished by his antisemitism in the 1930s and his collaborationist stance during the moment world war. But in the 1920s,he was much admired, and his score, and from which two orchestral suites alone survive,is a heady effort, exotically orchestrated, and reminiscent on occasion of Debussy,Ravel and Strauss.
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Source: theguardian.com