"It's about 65 minutes that you can follow almost breathlessly, haunting, well-matched, soothing. Quite a joy for the ears.", The Mainzer
"O Fortuna, velut luna, statu variabilis" - "Constantly changing like the moon is also fate".
Many are familiar with this choral movement from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, not least because of its frequent use in film and television. It frames the work, bringing home with force and clarity the inevitability of fate. Orff's Cantiones profanae, the profane chants, draw on medieval texts from the Codex Buranus to cast spotlights on existential aspects of human life such as courtship, bodily pleasures and transience.
This concert performance of Orff's composition focuses entirely on the musically richly endowed work with large-scale chorus, children's choir, vocal soloists and large-scale orchestra. Sonorous passages contrast with delicate and fragile sounds that explore the multiplicity of human life - though it is Fortuna, the goddess of fate, who decides for better or worse.
Text source and further information about this event: http://www.staatstheater-mainz.com/web/veranstaltungen/oper18-19/carmina
