13 May 2005

Premiere of Hildegard

I DON’T say that James Wood’s new opera about everyone’s favourite 12th-century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, broke the Trade Descriptions Act. But I imagine that many Norfolk and Norwich Festival patrons, lured by the promise of “a spectacle of sound and light”, thought that they were going to get one of those grandiose cathedral son et lumière shows, with the voice of someone like Donald Sinden doing a lugubrious narration while stained-glass windows gently light up.

Hildegard

Richard Morrison at Norwich Cathedral [Times Online, 13 May 05]

I DON'T say that James Wood's new opera about everyone's favourite 12th-century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, broke the Trade Descriptions Act. But I imagine that many Norfolk and Norwich Festival patrons, lured by the promise of "a spectacle of sound and light", thought that they were going to get one of those grandiose cathedral son et lumière shows, with the voice of someone like Donald Sinden doing a lugubrious narration while stained-glass windows gently light up.

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