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PEOPLE & ARTS Monday 24 SepteMber 2018

Alzheimer’s opera ‘Sky on Swings’ opens in Philadelphia

By RONALD BLUM keyboard notes and piz-
Associated Press zicato in the 11-piece or-
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Fred- chestra punctuate melodic
erica von Stade sat on a singing to create a disori-
table singing, her face filled enting intensity.
with fear and wonder, her “There was a feeling that
character unsure where the orchestral music in the
she was going and where piece needed to be about
she had been. disintegration or degenera-
Nearly a half-century af- tion in some way,” Beecher
ter her professional debut, said Friday.
the 73-year-old teamed Moscovitch’s libretto ex-
with fellow mezzo Marietta plores the place of the el-
Simpson for a mesmeriz- derly in a society with lon-
ing performance Thursday ger life spans, much like
night in the world premiere Alan Bennett’s “Allelujah!”
of “Sky on Swings,” Lembit which opened at London’s
Beecher’s joyful and dis- Bridge Theatre in July. But
turbing chamber opera while Bennett sets his play
about two women dete- in the specific locale of a
riorating from Alzheimer’s Yorkshire hospital and has
disease. sharp political commen-
Commissioned by Opera tary about cuts to Britain’s
Philadelphia for the first This Sept. 18, 2018 photo released by Opera Philadelphia, Mezzo-soprano Marietta Simpson, National Health Service,
night of its season-opening left, and Frederica von Stade in the new opera “Sky on Swings” premiering as part of Opera Moscovitch focuses “Sky”
O18 festival, the 78-minute Philadelphia’s O18 Festival. on the collapsing minds
work debuted on the eve Associated Press of the two principal char-
of World Alzheimer’s Day. It and Martha (the 59-year- In the third chamber opera Moscovitch after “I Have acters in their individual
explores the cognitive de- old Simpson), whose dis- by the 37-year-old Beech- No Stories to Tell You” and homes and a nonspecific
cline of Danny (von Stade) ease is more progressed. er and librettist Hannah “Sophia’s Forest,” jarring facility.q