A world-premiere recording and broadcast of The Wandering Jew, an opera with music and libretto by Robert Saxton. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3, the opera is a modernist take on the tale of the Wandering Jew, the shoe-mender condemned in legend to wander the earth until the Second Coming after refusing to help Jesus as He went to His crucifixion at Golgotha. Initially inspired by the East German / Jewish author Stefan Heym's satirical version of the mediaeval legend, Saxton's two-hour-long 'musico-dramatic myth for radio', scored for singers, actors, mixed choir, orchestra, and electroacoustic treatment, follows his own scenario in which many other legendary characters are introduced - from medieval and other myths: Faust, Mephistopheles, Kundry, Wotan. Underneath the surface of The Wandering Jew lies a structure relating to the annual cycle of Jewish and Christian festivals, which is combined with a plan of rising tonal centres, in a journey that takes eight scenes. 'All the music - both vocal and orchestral - is derived from a basic diatonic note-set', explains the composer (himself Jewish with one Christian grandparent, and strongly aware of his 'mixed' heritage): 'The essence of my opera is a meeting between the Wandering Jew and Jesus in a Nazi death camp during WW2; they become reconciled - as they are both 'condemned' Jews... The opera spans 2,000 years, ranging from the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70AD to the Holocaust in the 20th century. Apart from reconciliation and forgiveness, the opera examines the nature of Time and Reality; the legendary aspects of the drama are psychologically more 'real' and eternal and enduring than the historical elements.'
Studio production is by Ann McKay; electroacoustic sound design by Antony Pitts - who has worked with Saxton for over a decade on the realization of his unique radio opera, and recorded early workshop versions of key scenes for the landmark 18-hour history of Western music broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at the turn of the Millennium, The Unfinished Symphony (1999/2000).
Thank you for listening,
