Opera man

In truth, I’m not really so into Elvis Costello, although I have liked what early songs of his I’ve heard, but I figured this bit of news, so vaguely literary-related, was worth sharing:

Elvis Costello has made a

career out of confounding his fans. Over the years the man behind

Oliver’s Army has made a country album, worked with Burt Bacharach and

made an unashamedly romantic album of love songs. Now he looks likely

to baffle audiences again – by writing an opera.

Costello

is preparing to write a piece of lyric theatre based on the life of

Hans Christian Andersen. It will premiere at the Royal Danish Opera in

October.

He
has made several forays into the classical music world already, having
composed a ballet and collaborated with both the Brodsky Quartet and
the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. But the complexities of
operatic writing will provide him with his biggest challenge yet.

No kidding. The interesting thing was that the Danish Opera actually approached Costello with the commission:

“We looked around the

serious end of the rock scene for a person we thought could contribute

to our art form. We very quickly came up with Elvis.

“We
went to see him in Dublin with the idea of doing something about Hans
Christian Andersen. We thought we would be teaching him about Andersen
but he knew all about him.

“He
already had a very operatic idea: that of a staged song cycle connected
with the life of Andersen and actually about the writer’s obsession
with Jenny Lind [the Swedish soprano].

“There
is an element of fiction: in Costello’s version, Andersen has written
Lind a number of secret arias (he was also something of an actor and
composer) and the scenario is that he presents his pieces to her for
the first time to sing.”

No question Costello has always and continues to march to his own drummer.