Opera, the world's leading opera magazine, wrote a review of my and Rebecca Hurst's opera Music and the Brain. A very nice surprise.
Highlight:
“The music, in a postmodern tonal idiom, is immediately coherent and engaging, and Thorgunnur Anna Ornolfsdottir and Gunnar Gudbjornsson, called upon to speak as well as sing, gave consummate performances.”
The full review:
“Music and the brain, previously staged in Iceland and Sweden, is composed by Helgi R. Ingvarsson. It occupies similar territory as Michael Nyman’s 1986 opera The man who mistook his wife for a hat, in that the libretto, by Rebecca Hurst, is based on a case document by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. The two characters, accompanied by piano and flute, are a mezzo-soprano who has suffered trauma in an accident and her doctor. The music, in a postmodern tonal idiom, is immediately coherent and engaging, and Thorgunnur Anna Ornolfsdottir and Gunnar Gudbjornsson, called upon to speak as well as sing, gave consummate performances.”
not pictured: Music and the brain opera
The review appeared in the November 2022 issue.