Irma
Music by Gavin Bryars
Irma is a 1969 experimental opera by artists Tom Phillips, Fred Orton and Gavin Bryars. The score involved 93 random phrases taken from the 1892 novel A Human Document by W.H. Mallock, which Phillips had reworked in a 'treated' version, A Humument. They were then divided up into sound suggestions, a libretto and staging directions. The score was completed in 1969. It was then published in the French avant garde poetry magazine O.U. The opera itself had its premiere at the Bordeaux Festival in 1970. It has been performed sporadically since then, including the University of Newcastle in 1972, York University in 1973 and in London in 1983. A published version of the score was issued in 2014 "providing a recipe book for a stage event; with all the ingredients of traditional opera, dance episodes, drinking chorus, mad scene, erotic enactment, and the many variations on love and death."
Text from the Wikipedia article "Irma (opera)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Richard Gavin Bryars (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Gavin Bryars", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Gavin Bryars
- Doctor Ox's Experiment (1998)