George Benjamin: Picture a day like this

Description

Picture a Day Like This is the fourth operatic collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin , Lessons in Love and Violence , and Into the Little Hill. This limited edition of the full score is one of only 150, presented in a cloth-bound hard cover. It is signed by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp and includes facsimile reproductions of pages from the manuscript, sketches by Benjamin and Crimp, and a photograph of Benjamin, Crimp, and directors Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma in rehearsal at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

In this bittersweet fable of grief and renewal. Benjamin and Crimp tell the story of a woman who has lost her child: if, before nightfall, she meets one truly happy person and cuts a button from their sleeve, her child will live again. in her search she meets a pair of lovers, a composer and their assistant, an artisan, collector, and, in a beautiful garden, the mysterious Zabelle.

"Benjamin proves with this taut,-sharp miniature that he is the finest opera composer of today…a work of depth of feeling, humanistic artistry, and expressive rigor…a drama that is miraculously condensed." -- Süddeutsche Zeitung (Reinhard J. Brembeck) 9 July 2023