Olagón: a Cantata in Doublespeak is a new collaboration between Princeton University Department of Music Professor Dan Trueman, Global Scholar Iarla Ó Lionáird, and the Lewis Center for the Arts Professor Paul Muldoon, with the multiple GRAMMY Award-winning chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. The CD will be released on Friday, November 10, 2017, and the production will come to the Wallace Theater at the new Lewis Arts complex Thursday-Saturday February 22-24, 2018 as part of Eighth Blackbird’s residency at Princeton Sound Kitchen.
Olagón reimagines an ancient Irish epic, relaying a story of hardship in contemporary, post-recession Ireland using text by Muldoon in both English and Irish Gaelic. With tribute to the traditional musics of Ireland, Norway, and America in a score composed by Trueman and performed by Ó Lionáird, this multi-cultural production depicts “not without irony and humor — a privileged power couple mired in envy, greed, and adultery, descending into criminality and addiction as Ireland’s economy collapses in the early 21st century.”
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