Close-Up: Chant d'amour et de mort

Close-Up: Amy Moore – Messiaen’s grandest song cycle of love and death.

Radical 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen’s obsession with the transformative qualities of music and its power to connect the human soul with distant mysteries of the universe is channelled into his epic song cycle, Harawi. Featuring Principal Artist, soprano Amy Moore, accompanied by Artistic Director, Antony Pitts, the music and the love poetry were written while Messiaen’s wife Claire Delbos was suffering from serious mental illness. Harawi is infused with an fantastical mix of Peruvian ritual, the grandest and catchiest of post-Wagnerian melodies, and a calm, deep faith in the Eternal.