ATTHIS By G. F. Haas; Staged World Premiere, Peter Peyman Farzinpour Conductor

Opera ATTHIS by G. F. Haas, Conducted by Peter Peyman Farzinpour

I usually don’t revisit older projects for the fact that as an artist, I’m always looking forward to what is coming next. But a friend happened to repost a glowing New York Times article *Revealing Art, Bursting at the Seams of Control *which had given a fantastic review to the world staged premiere of the G. F. Haas chamber opera, ATTHIS, and which I had the pleasure and honor of conducting. The 45 minute opera is based on text fragments by Sappho and traces the passionate ups and downs in the very intense relationship between the Greek poet and one of her favorite (younger) students. Sappho sings of her despair over having lost her lover with great anguish turned physical, while the ensemble creates the atmosphere of her between self-destruction and liberation. The composer G. F. Haas has done a masterful job of creating an arc of a narrative from fragmented texts while avoiding cliches of typical operas. Here is a segment from the NY Times review:

Conducted by Peyman Farzinpour, this performance was a “searing narrative of desire” and “blazing intensity.” From the “layered dissonances” to the “raw, no-holds-barred” energy on stage, it was an unforgettable high-wire act.

It was one of the most beautiful pieces of contemporary music I’ve come across, and I found a snippet from the production that reminded me of the extraordinary experience of the music. In fact, it gave me the inspiration for my next project, a chamber opera based on the Persian poet Rumi. For those of you who are not accustomed to contemporary opera or such music, it may come across as quite “different” from the typical operas one generally comes across (such as by Verdi). But this is a sound world that requires that requires patience and the understanding that it is a modern musical language, and to keep in mind that even some of the now most beloved operas (such as Carmen) or any piece of music traditional classical music, for that matter, were once “new music” and it took time for those audiences to get accustomed to those sounds as well. There is a now infamous quote a by critic from the premiere of Carmen who stated that the opera had no tunes in it! (Just imagine that for a moment, about Carmen…) You may view s preview of ATTHIS here (please note that the segment comprises various passages of the opera interwoven together): https://youtu.be/8UIWD2lQt-0?si=M63558tQK0pls7i7

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