Music Program Presents

György Kurtág, the greatest translator of Beckett
 

A “patiently perfect” opera (The New York Times) setting Samuel Beckett’s Endgame“to create an uncompromising work that is utterly distinctive” (The Guardian), a piece which proves its composer “to be Beckett’s equal” (The New Yorker): Fin de partie the long awaited first opera by the last representative of post-war art music, the 93-year-old Hungarian composer, György Kurtág had its first performance in November last year in one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, La Scala in Milan. The opera makes intensive use of the four-hundred-year-old genre’s well-known techniques, while its musical language is true to Kurtág’s style (some basic elements of the opera’s music can be found already in the earliest pieces of Kurtág written in the late 1950s). Based on interviews made with the composer and using excerpts from a yet unpublished documentary on the opera, the lecture gives an introduction to Fin de partie, to Kurtág’s music and to his more than 60-year old relationship with Beckett’s texts. 
 

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Bito 210

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