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Volante Opera Tolkien

23 May, 2023 (edited)
2023-5-23 6:10:03 PM UTC

I rarely post in this thread as I seldom have anything not seen before. Today I can share my recent aquisition though. Paul Corfield Godfrey's excellent series of Middle-earth operas has been on my radar for a little while and being interested in classical and opera these sounded up my street.

The first CD is a standalone title: Akallabeth and Other Tolkien Works. This covers various songs, such as Strider, Song of the eagles, Shadow-Bride and others. It's style and tone clearly covers a wide period of time and that is explained in part by Corfield in the booklet which considering is small, is packed full of information.





I have listened to some of the first part so far, Feanor, and what I have heard so far is remarkable. This won't eb for everyone, but it is most certainly for me. Four parts of the Epic Scenes from The Silmarillion have been released so far (Feanor, Beren and Luthien, Beren and Luthien (PCG talks about Beren and Luthien), The Children of Hurin, and The Fall of Gondolin (PCG talks about his work on this title)), The Fall of Gondolin (PCG taks about FoG: Part 2, and the fifth (War of Wrath) in the series will be released next month. The covers for the four epic scenes titles are beautiful, of course as they are from Ted Nasmith.


More details about Paul Corfiled Godfrey's work can be found at his website and those interested can catch Paul's talk from Tolkien 20019.

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23 May, 2023
2023-5-23 7:07:52 PM UTC
Are you an opera lover or at least like classical music? I can’t say I listen to either apart from rarely listening to tiny parts on radio ClassicFM, if I happen to pass a radio. However, I do like the Tolkien Ensemble and various other types. I first heard of Paul about 4-5yrs ago at a Middle-earth event I was attending, but I never stayed to listen. Then I’ve listened to him chat online at Oxonmoots. I’ve thought about buying the cds but then wondered if I’d be wasting my money. So you would recommend them?
23 May, 2023
2023-5-23 8:25:49 PM UTC

huan68 wrote:

Are you an opera lover or at least like classical music? I can’t say I listen to either apart from rarely listening to tiny parts on radio ClassicFM, if I happen to pass a radio. However, I do like the Tolkien Ensemble and various other types. I first heard of Paul about 4-5yrs ago at a Middle-earth event I was attending, but I never stayed to listen. Then I’ve listened to him chat online at Oxonmoots. I’ve thought about buying the cds but then wondered if I’d be wasting my money. So you would recommend them?

I love classical and opera and feel Tolkien suits opera very well, but whether it's for most readers, well, I doubt it. But that said the group here aren't the usual 'casual' reader. In my description above, I've linked to YouTube for the Beren and Luthien pieces (first Beren and Luthien link) which is a playlist of the pieces I found there. That will certainly tell you enough after a few tracks if these are something you would enjoy.

I'll add that Christopher Tolkien had provided PCG with copious manuscript page which he used when writing these operas. He's very well read on Tolkien.
23 May, 2023
2023-5-23 9:37:44 PM UTC
Thanks, I’ll give it a listen ?
24 May, 2023 (edited)
2023-5-24 8:47:34 AM UTC
24 May, 2023
2023-5-24 9:24:28 AM UTC
Very nice. Great that they appear to have put together a smaller version of the Libretto to fit the CD size. I will be getting the Libretto books later in the year but I want them in the A4 format.
24 May, 2023
2023-5-24 10:13:21 PM UTC
Wow. I’ll have to grab this! I guess it may be too much to hope for that a version on vinyl might be released.
3 Jun, 2023
2023-6-3 10:32:45 PM UTC
Hi everyone - this board was brought to our attention so I thought it might be worth wading in!

Paul’s contract with the Tolkien Estate only allows the lyrics to be published in conjunction with the music, be that in scores or with a CD. This is why we have now published the libretto with the complete set.

We do have some spares though and if you purchase War of Wrath direct from us we can sell them as an “add-on” with that CD but they cannot be sold separately.

This also means that we cannot publish these words as a separate A4 book.

The scores are available from Paul’s website and they have all of the words along with the music - the best way to follow along!
3 Jun, 2023
2023-6-3 10:37:49 PM UTC
Hi,

Unfortunately there are many factors in the way of these being on vinyl.

The complete set is on 10 CDs and the music is “through composed” which means that finding the side splits would be problematic.

There’s 10.5 hours worth of music across the ten discs… it would be a lot of vinyl.

Also the costs of vinyl production would be hard to cover with the level of demand. We’ve had a few requests but nowhere near enough to break even.
3 Jun, 2023
2023-6-3 10:45:34 PM UTC
Also… the complete sets are quite limited!

Our distributor has not taken many copies for sale on Amazon etc.

We are selling direct from ourselves or Paul’s website but we can only continue to make them for so long as supplies of some of the earlier CDs are starting to get quite low!

We may be able to reprint these but we’d have to really be selling lots of copies to make this viable.

Everyone on these discs has taken part for nothing other than a promise of a profit share, we’ve been extremely lucky to get all of these recorded but we are a tiny company with limited resources and reprints would be a risk.
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