Three-wheeled too: melody, rhythm, and bass drone. Steven Jobe will be performing his original concert opera “The Legend of the Fairy Mesuline” this weekend and next at the Beneficent Church’s Round Top Center, as part of the FirstWorks festival. Jobe, a faculty member at both CCRI and Salve, apparently designs the instruments he hears playing in his head as he’s composing the music, resulting in items like his 10-foot hurdy-gurdy that will be part of this performance. (He likes “Big Instruments.”) Sounds like a unique event. RIYL “Bewitched.”
An operatic concert premiere from the workshop of Rhode Island composer Steven Jobe, supported by a cast of outstanding local musicians. Based on a 14th century French folktale, the story of Melusine is filled with romance, mystery, and shape shifting. Half-fairy by birth, Melusine appears most of the time as a human. But, because of a curse, once a week she transforms into half-woman, half-serpent—a secret she keeps from her mortal husband, Raimondin.
Jobe’s significant score employs a septet of orchestral instruments complemented by less traditional sounds – including his signature, pitched chromatic glass bells and full hurdy-gurdy collection, capped by the 10-foot long, “Bosch Hurdy Gurdy”, inspired by 16th-century Hieronymous Bosch painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights”.
To create the world of Melusine onstage, Jobe worked in collaboration with director/dramaturge Vanessa Gilbert and shadow puppeteer Dan Butterworth. More at ProJo.
8pm, Saturday and 3pm, Sunday (September 13 & 14)/8pm, Saturday and 3pm Sunday (September 20 & 21)
$20 at door, Round Top Center, 300 Weybosset Street, 401.421.4278, (directions)