Availability

Score and part on special sale from the Hire Library

Programme Notes

Initiated by the Viola Commissioning Circle, for Lawrence Power, this set of Three Berceuses was arranged for viola and piano by Thomas Adès from his opera The Exterminating Angel.  They are based on some of the opera’s most exquisite and memorable music – the first two drawing on the yearning melancholy duets of the doomed lovers Beatriz and Eduardo, the last a version of Silvia’s eerie berceuse macabre from Act III, in which she cradles a dead lamb, thinking she is rocking her son to sleep (‘It’s very late now, Yoli, it’s bedtime’).

Three Berceuses from The Exterminating Angel

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre (London, United Kingdom)

Thomas Adès/Lawrence Power