NY Philharmonic Ends Its Season with David Lang’s ‘prisoner of the state’

Composer David Lang. Photo: Peter Serling

    The New York Philharmonic  began the 2018-2019 season in light and ended in darkness with the world premiere of David Lang's opera prisoner of the state. The NYP commission, conducted by Music Director Jaap van Zweden, performed June 6-8 as part of the orchestra's Music of Conscience series, explored the long tendrils of totalitarianism - and an opera born out of hate is brilliant. prisoner of the state is a meditation on Beethoven's only opera Fidelio (1805), whose titled character infiltrates where her wrongfully incarcerated husband is held and saves him from execution.  Written during the Napoleonic wars, Beethoven never hid his passion for freedom.  Lang removes

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