FRIDA
Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist, described the work of his wife Frida Kahlo, as:
Acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly's wing, lovable as a beautiful smile, and as profound and cruel as the bitterness of life.
In this project, we were lucky to give the world premiere of Paul Max Edlin’s work FRIDA, an “operatic monodrama in twelve tableaux”. The piece uses text from Kahlo’s own diary, described by critics and historians as a chaotic, visual masterpiece that functions less like a standard journal and more like a window into her subconscious.
Edlin’s music, challenging and uncompromising in its complexity, runs the full gamut of expression and effect, arguably portraying each of the characteristics noted by Rivera in relation to Kahlo’s work.
Kahlo’s words were sung by British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, who was the winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the 2019 BBC Cardiff Singer of the world. Bray said of Kahlo:
I am drawn to her incredible resilience, in the face of such adversity. I am also fascinated by her use of language - her diary is so surreal, so detailed, so brutally honest - the language hits you right between the eyes.
The piece is scored for string quartet, flute, clarinet, and the Magnetic Resonator Piano (MRP), an instrument created by Professor Andrew McPherson, Chair in Design Engineering and Music at Imperial College London, and Director of the Augmented Instruments Laboratory in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). The instrument places electromagnets either side of each piano string, allowing a vibration to be created by induction rather than by hammer strokes. The resulting ethereal sound and selection of extraordinary effects that the instrument is capable of (infinite sustain, crescendos, harmonics, pitch bends, harmonic glissandi, and new timbres) give Edlin’s piece an otherworldly and unexpected character. Click here to read more about the instrument.
The first performance took place in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, receiving an excellent reception by Stagetalk Magazine.
This was followed later, in 2022, with two more performances of the work, one at the QMUL and one at the Deal Festival of Music and the Arts. The London performance also saw premieres of three new works by students from the Royal College of Music (RCM), each using the same ensemble as FRIDA and the Magnetic Resonator Piano’s extended capabilities.
The three students produced the new works after a series of workshops, led by RCM Composition Professor Haris Kittos. The works and composers were:
Chiaroscuro - Lara Poe
Incense - Yannis Maramathas
El Aquelarre - Salvador Sánchez
Katie Bray - Mezzo-soprano
Paul Max Edlin - Composer
Matthew Hardy - Conductor
Yiannis Maramathas
Lara Poe - Composer
Salvador Sánchez - Composer