Gareth Farr's 'Relict Furies' to feature Margaret Medlyn
It has just been announced that Margaret Medlyn, head of NZSM's classical voice department, will star in Gareth Farr's Relict Furies, being performed as part of the NZ Festival on Tuesday 15 March.
Premiered to great acclaim at the Edinburgh International Festival, Relict Furies gives a voice to World War I’s New Zealand “relicts” – the widows and sweethearts who waved their men goodbye and never saw them again.
Margaret Medlyn sings Paul Horan’s powerfully affecting libretto (“Tomorrow I wear my wedding shoes to your funeral”), while Gareth Farr’s score places two mirrored string sections from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on opposite sides of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul to open up the vast internal landscapes of bereavement and fury.
The concert also includes works for strings by Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Peter Sculthorpe.