The Blood of a Poet
From Tue 30 Apr to Wed 08 May“Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls,” proclaimed Jean Cocteau on his ground-breaking first film The Blood of a Poet —an exploration of the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor and the relationship between art and dreams. One of cinema’s great experiments, this first instalment of the Orphic Trilogy stretches the medium to its limits in an effort to capture the poet’s obsession with the struggle between the forces of life and death. Cocteau chose composer Georges Auric as his musical partner in this remarkable endeavour.
Ciné-Concert
The screening on 30 April will be preceded by a performance with soprano Dame Felicity Lott and composer and pianist Jason Carr
About our guests
Dame Felicity Lott CBE made her Glyndebourne Festival début in 1977, taking part in almost every subsequent Festival until 1990. She has sung at all the major opera houses of the world and with many great conductors. She sang the role of the Marschallin on a DVD of Der Rosenkavalier conducted by Carlos Kleiber at the Vienna State Opera. In Paris she took part in popular performances and recordings of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein. She has also toured the world giving song recitals. Dame Felicity Lott holds many Honorary Doctorates and Fellowships, including from the Universities of Oxford, London, Paris Sorbonne, and Sussex, and is a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur and an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2010 she was awarded the Wigmore Medal and in 2014 the ISM Distinguished Musician Award.
Jason Carr studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After winning the 1988 Vivian Ellis Prize, Jason was invited by Peter Hall to compose the musical Born Again (Chichester Festival Theatre starring Mandy Patinkin and José Ferrer). Jason has composed incidental music for over 50 plays, including 17 productions for the late Steven Pimlott. Orchestration credits includes the Menier Chocolate Factory’s Sunday in the Park with George, La Cage aux Folles and A Little Night Music (all also West End and Broadway, winning the Drama Desk Award and two Tony nominations for Best Orchestrations), and Fiddler On The Roof (Olivier Award nomination Best New Orchestrations). Jason Carr accompanied Dame Felicity Lott in her show Parlez-moi d’amour, directed by Laurent Pelly, in Brussels, Paris, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, and Barcelona.
In partnership with Banque Transatlantique :
