Vinkensport

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Work data
Original title: Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera
Original language: English
Music: David T. Little
Libretto : Royce Vavrek
Premiere: February 28, 2010
Place of premiere: The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (New York)
Playing time: about 40 minutes
people

Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera ("Finkensport or Die Finkenoper") is a comedic opera - one-act play with music by the American composer David T. Little based on a libretto by Royce Vavrek , which revolves around the Flemish national sport of sitting finches.

action

In “Vinkenzetting”, the participants sit next to each other on chairs in front of them, each with a chaffinch in a bird box. Everyone counts the complete calls (so-called "Suskewiets") of their finches by making lines with chalk on a wooden counting stick (like a notch stick ). Whoever registers the most calls within an hour wins.

The setting is an unspecified small town in Belgium . The opera is less about sport than about six participants in a competition. They do not have names, but are only identified by the names of their birds. In inner monologues one learns their stories, their longings and their motivations for practicing this strange, often boring "sport".

Hans Sachs' trainer is more of a proletarian; he desperately wants to win, gets himself in the mood with coke and heavy metal and dopes his bird by injecting a serum. Farinelli's trainer is also sure of victory: she has recorded the perfect calls from her finch, which she found dead in his cage a long time ago and then flushed into the toilet. Your box contains, invisibly, only a CD player. The staid trainer of St. Francis has been abandoned by her husband and is longing for her neighbor, the trainer of Prince Gabriel III. from Belgium - he only takes part in the competition because it is the only connection to his deceased father, who always treated him badly and only felt and showed love for his finches. Atticus Finch's trainer despises everyone else and dignified this sport as a good Belgian tradition. Sir Elton John's trainer, after all, is the sophisticated, bored wife of the local factory owner who sponsors the sport and demands that his wife be close to the people and take part - in return, she has forced him to travel to Hong Kong; She can only endure the competition with a huge number of vodka martinis , and she is already well known in the town: last year, after sitting down, she went to the mayor's old father to do the laundry.

The competition ends with the victory of Hans Sachs. Farinelli's trainer gives her box a disappointed kick and reveals her deception. Prince Gabriel's trainer rejects his neighbour's embarrassing advances, and Sir Elton John's trainer is drunk and looks for an erotic victim. The trainer of Atticus Finch (named after the main character of the novel Who disturbs the nightingale , an upright lawyer) gives his finch, who was a good co-competitor and companion of his domestic loneliness for many years, a moving eulogy and gives the bird its freedom .

music

The composition is varied, lively, in a moderately modern idiom, sometimes with echoes of minimal music , rock music or musical. The vocal declamation is strongly based on the speech melody and rhythmically notated in a differentiated way. Each figure is particularly characterized musically, for example Sir Elton John's trainer with jazz echoes and Atticus Finch's trainer with a sedate arioso . Hans Sachs' victory is accompanied by an alienated quote from Wagner's Mastersingers . The work is available in two alternative versions; the original scoring with orchestral accompaniment was later arranged by the composer for flute, clarinet, piano and string quintet .

Performances

Vinkensport was commissioned by Dawn Upshaw for the Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and was premiered there by students in 2010. This production was directed by James Bagwell and directed by Dan Rigazzi. After Little had already decoupled two numbers, the “arias” of Atticus Finch's trainer (“Dear Atticus”) and Sir Elton John's trainer (“The Professional”) with reduced instrumental accompaniment, in 2018 he worked on the chamber version of the entire opera on behalf of Opera Saratoga . It was performed for the first time on June 30, 2018 in The Spa Little Theater, Saratoga Springs (New York) under the musical direction of David Alan Miller and directed by Michael Mori.

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