A Tolkien-inspired opera, The Fall of Gondolin, will be released on 1st September and is now available for pre-order. Composed by Paul Corfield Godfrey is follows on from last year’s Akȃllabeth and Other Tolkien Works.
The composition, first created in the 1980s with the permission of the Tolkien Estate, is in nine scenes (plus prologue and epilogue) and has 10 characters including Ulmo, Maeglin, Ecthelion, Turgon, and Idril. Released by Prima Facie Records in association with Volante Opera Productions, the opera was performed by members of the Welsh National Opera and will also be played at the Middle-earth Festival next month.
The opera is unconnected from the forthcoming publication of The Fall of Gondolin, and over the coming years other parts of the suite including The Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien will be released. It is released with the permission of the Tolkien Estate, and includes cover art by Ted Nasmith.
From their press release:
During the period 1982-97 Welsh composer Paul Corfield Godfrey produced a series of ‘epic scenes’ drawn from J R R Tolkien’s posthumous writings for The Silmarillion, employing a large variety of posthumously published texts by the author with the permission of the Tolkien Estate. The cycle, extending in performance over four evenings, is the largest-scale work of classical music written in Wales in the twentieth century, demanding a full roster of solo singers, chorus and an orchestra of some eighty players, but has only ever been performed in excerpts until now.
Following on the success last year of the CD of the composer’s music including the piano rondo Akallabêth and other Tolkien works, Prima Facie Records in collaboration with Volante Opera Productions now presents the first instalment in a complete recording of the epic scenes, to be released in a series of double CD albums. The singers are all professional artists from Welsh National Opera, and the sets will make available for the first time a fully representative recording of the music with the complete lyrics by Tolkien.
You can order a copy through the Prima Facie website.
