An image from the Royal Opera’s 2025 production of Die Walküre.
In Wednesday’s (4/16) IPaper.com (U.K.), Alexandra Coghlan writes, “Does size matter? When it comes to classical music, the answer has never been more unequivocal: the bigger, the better. From operatic epics to all-night performances and sprawling symphonies to experimental installations, classical music has supersized its offering, and audiences can’t seem to get enough. Later this month, pianist Igor Levit joins forces with conceptual artist Marina Abramovic for a staging of Eric Satie’s infamous Vexations at the Royal Festival Hall … some 16-20 hours of performance in which a single page of music (an 18-note theme and two ‘variations’) is repeated 840 times…. This year’s Edinburgh Festival will open with John Taverner’s ‘supreme achievement,’ The Veil of the Temple—an eight-hour musical vigil that brings together some 250 performers … Go classic this spring with Die Walküre—the second instalment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (15 hours in total)—at the Royal Opera…. Some (Abramovic among them) argue that these pieces and their audiences perform an important act of resistance: refuse to engage with disposable insta-culture, defy it with mindfulness, and supply meditative stillness in a spiraling world…. Contemporary American composer Pauline Oliveros proposed a philosophy she called ‘Deep Listening’ … It’s listening as an end in itself, a sonic merging of individual, collective and environment.”
