The Party: A New Stop-Motion Opera Film

It’s hard to imagine the buzz surrounding composer Joseph Haydn in the late 18th century, especially in London, where his arrival could raise frenzy akin to modern-day superstars like Taylor Swift. London papers gushed about “the inexhaustible, the wonderful, the sublime HAYDN!” and fans flocked to hear his music, including a collection of symphonies written for his London appearances. One of the best-known and best-loved of his London symphonies, “The Clock” is charming, dramatic, and virtuosic, holding audiences entranced for more than 200 years.

Haydn was an innovator who inspired generations of composers to come, and his “Clock” is right at home alongside two much newer works on this program. Arthur Honegger, a lifelong train fanatic, wrote his Pacific 231 to mimic the conversion of a train from a mass of motionless metal into a hurtling comet blazing along a track. His music inspired two films, one of which you’ll see in this concert.

The program concludes with a dazzling new multimedia piece commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Artist Alex Da Corte’s stunning works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other notable museums and festivals around the world. Here he collaborates with composer Austin Fisher to create a film that employs surreal, stop-motion animation, operatic singers, and the Orchestra to satirize social rituals and consumer culture.

Who better to conduct this thrilling program than Principal Guest Conductor Marin Alsop, “a formidable musician and a powerful communicator, a conductor with a vision of what an American orchestra could be in the 21st century” (The New York Times)?

Detail installation view of Marisol’s The Party, 1965–66, in Marisol: A Retrospective at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, July 12, 2024–January 6, 2025. Artwork: Collection Toledo Museum of Art. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum.