La Délivrance de Thésée
Music by Darius Milhaud
La Délivrance de Thésée (The Deliverance of Theseus) is the final opera in a trilogy of "opéras minute", composed by the French composer Darius Milhaud in 1927 to a libretto by Henri Hoppenot. The first two works in the series are L'Enlèvement d'Europe (The Abduction of Europe) and L'abandon d'Ariane (The Abandonment of Ariadne), and the running time for the complete trilogy is approximated at 28 minutes. La Délivrance is the shortest of the three operas, with a running time recorded as 7 minutes 27 seconds, and when written was generally regarded as the world's shortest opera.
In 1993 La Délivrance was replaced as the world's shortest opera when Sands of Time, by the Welsh composer Peter Reynolds, was premiered in Cardiff, with a running time given as 4 minutes 9 seconds.
Text from the Wikipedia article "La Délivrance de Thésée", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Darius Milhaud (French: [daʁjys mijo]; Provençal: [miˈjawt]; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers. He taught many future jazz and classical composers, including Burt Bacharach, Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis among others.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Darius Milhaud", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Darius Milhaud
- L'Abandon d'Ariane (1891)
- L'Orestie d'Eschyle (1913)
- Christophe Colomb (1930)
- David (1954)