Sting And Elvis Costello, A Night At The Opera

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Sting and Elvis Costello are starring a new opera reports London's Telegraph. Called Welcome to the Voice the story sounds vaguely reminiscent of Tosca and was composed by Costello's long-time keyboardist Steve Nieve with the libretto by Muriel Teodori, Nieve's wife.

The piece was originally workshopped at a New York Jazz Festival in 2000 and mixes popular with operatic singing, with influences of jazz, electronic composition and full orchestral arrangements.

A big Costello fan from This Year's Model to Goodbye Cruel World, I lost touch with his work for the past 20 plus years. I was surprised to learn that besides this, he also has an unfinished opera, The Secret Arias, that was workshopped by the Royal Danish Opera. Seems all things come full circle in life and I have a lot of skipped recordings from Elvis to discover now.

In a degree of separation type of thing, it is also worth noting that The Police's drummer Stewart Copeland also composed operas which means one from Sting can't be too far behind (hey, he covered madrigals already)

The opera, which opened at Theatre Chatlet in Paris yesterday and runs through November 25, has also been released as a cd.

Below is a behind-the-scenes look at Welcome to the Voice, in French.

-- Edward

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