Performances - Hardcover

Friel, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1852353554 ISBN 13: 9781852353551

Publisher: The Gallery Press, 2003

Synopsis

In 1928, at the age of seventy-four and just a few months before he died, Leos Janacek completed his String Quartet No. 2. He called it Intimate Letters. Brian Friel's play through which this quartet is woven, centres on the circumstances surrounding its composition and specifically on the effect of Janacek's relationship with Kamila Stosslova.
By reflecting on the composer's intoxication with a married woman nearly forty years his junior, to whom he wrote over seven hundred letters, Friel considers the interaction between that passion and Janacek's final surge of creative energy; the relationship between the private life and the public work; and the artist's insistence - or delusion? - that he chose, in Yeats's phrase, the perfection of the work.

About this title

Book Description

Performances, by Brian Friel, explores the relationship the the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janácek, and his final surge of creative energy.

About the Author

Brian Friel was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, in 1929. His plays include Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, Faith Healer, Making History, Dancing at Lughnasa and The Home Place.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Gallery Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852353554
• ISBN 13: 9781852353551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 48