<<  -- 2 --  Wilfrid Mellers    SECOND SIGHT

Keiser's inventive originality is not confined to the solo music for the 'leads'. Theatrical set-pieces are also renewed in primal immediacy, as in the second act's pastoral arcadia [listen -- CD 2 track 1, 0:00-1:00] wherein imprisoned and peasant-disguised Atys is as though 'born again'. The music, evoking insects, birds, beasts and primitive peasants in vivid vivacity, might be Modern Music or ageless folk-music; anti-war and anti-heroism, since its sound-images ring truly simple and simply true, with real children piping their childish ditties among the raucous adults. The all-too-conventional theme of reality and illusion here plumbs unexpected depths, culminating in an exquisite duet on a ground bass sung by noble Elvira and bucolic Clerida (who is in love with the treacherous but of course ultimately repentant Orsanes), capped by an even more exquisite siciliano sung by Elmira to the presumed peasant whom she cannot believe to be her beloved Atys.

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