Venus & Adonis / Savitri at The Flea Theater

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2. Venus & Adonis / Savitri

John Blow's opera, Venus & Adonis, explores and exploits the themes of power play, manipulation, and yearning. Venus’s reluctance to surrender coupled with Adonis’s innocence leads to both a tragic accident and poignant transcendence. The work was the first to have been written by a female librettist, Anne Finch.

Blow’s reinterpretation of the myth features sensual English baroque music and scenes of love, desire and playful pageantry of cupids. Controversially categorized by some scholars as the first English baroque opera, this piece inspired legendary later works including Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

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Gustav Holst was quite taken with Hindu writings in his early career and it was as a result of his studies in Sanskrit that Savitri emerged in 1908. Based on a story from the Mahabharata, the one act opera depicts a devoted wife (Savitri) who, through unusual fortitude and pointed acumen, releases her husband (Satyavan) from the supposedly irrevocable call of Death.

This production will honor the Indian culture that gave us this story and feature singers of South Asian heritage.

Artwork for Holst's Savitri

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