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A spectacularly virtuosic tour de force for solo female singer.
Award-winning composer Ana Sokolovic chooses
her favourite love poems from many different
languages and sets them to music. The composer
includes romantic love, love for one’s mother, love
between children, love for a daughter, love
shattered by grief and love for a lost brother. This
fully staged production includes poems from
Michael Hartnett, Paul Éluard, Émile Nelligan,
Vasko Popa, Miroslav Antic, Laza Kostic,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shakespeare,
Catullus,Walt Whitman and Amarusataka.
Interspersed with the love songs are four
movements that Sokolovic calls ‘doves’, in which
the performer sings, whispers or speaks the phrase
‘I love you’ in a total of 100 languages.
After a very successful premiere in Toronto in
March 2008 at the Canadian Opera Company’s
Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, the opera is
presently touring nationally and internationally.
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LAUREN PHILLIPS
Music – ANA SOKOLOVIC
Choreography and Direction –
MARIE-JOSÉE CHARTIER
Lighting – BONNIE BEECHER & GLENN ÐAVIDSON
Forces – ONE FEMALE SINGER
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| PHOTOS: JOHN LAUENER |
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“A magnificent work… The geographic, linguistic and
emotional expansiveness of Sokolovic’s texts carries over into
her music, which goes far beyond conventional operatic use
of the voice…
Phillips went beyond virtuosity and entered into the
various states of love with purity of heart as well as voice,
and conveyed an exhilarating freedom and daring as she
leapt from language to language - especially in the dizzying
“I love you’s”…
A full day later, I was still shaken by her performance… Sokolovic has touched the primeval heart of civilization
… (and) breathes new life into Canadian music theatre.”
– The Globe and Mail
(March 2008 premiere, director Brent Krysa)
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“The biggest applause at the Biennale was for Love Songs. The phenomenal performer was mezzo-soprano
Lauren Phillips who returned five times for curtain calls to an enchanted audience – more curtain calls
than any other performer in the entire Biennale. The perfect concept of composer Ana Sokolovic mirrored
the virtuosity of the performer. Once again it was clear that we don’t need a lot of ‘everything’ to make a
quality project – only one good concept and a good performer, and we will remember Love Songs for a very
very long time after this Zagreb Music Biennale.”
– Zagreb Vjesnik večernje izdanje, April 2009
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