Michael Nyman: The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Naxos) by Norman Lebrecht
★★ (out of five)
In the spring of 1985, I saw three opera world premieres in London in as many weeks. There was Busoni’s Doctor Faust in the restored original ending, Birtwistle’s breakthrough opera The Mask of Orpheus and last, and smallest, Michael Nyman’s chamber opera on a troubling case history by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. I felt confident at the time that Nyman’s opera would be revived soon and often, but that’s not how it goes. Chamber operas are notoriously hard to get staged, falling as they do between too many institutional stools. The drama does not transfer well to record, either in the original Sony recording of 1987 or in this new issue of a Nashville Opera production from November 2013.
(via)
]]>