The magnificent musical play of Daniel, composed eight centuries ago in Beauvais, France, is the subject of a recent, acclaimed production by The Boston Camerata. Freshly transcribed from the original manuscript source, and powerfully staged for modern audiences by Anne Azéma, the new Daniel is available for touring during the Camerata’s 70th Anniversary season 2024-2025.
“A pure delight…Top 10”
— Boston Classical Review
“Timeless spiritual message [conveyed] more convincingly than any Hollywood epic.”
— The Boston Globe
“Unexpected energy and immediacy….immersive and subtle staging…hugely successful”
— The Boston Musical Intelligencer
“Powerful…Impressive”
— Chicago Classical Review
“Anne Azéma… one of the most intelligent, creative, and talented performers and
directors not just of early music, but of any repertoire.”
— Fanfare Magazine
This ambitious production combines old and new, bringing together music and movement, theater and liturgy, light and shadow, to retell the biblical story of the young prophet-in-exile. The underlying, still-contemporary themes of tyranny punished, and of redemption from bondage, are brilliantly served by Anne Azéma’s staging and by an extraordinary singing and playing cast.
The first part of the performance introduces the public to the liturgical world of Beauvais Cathedral circa 1200, with chants and songs of the New Year’s season, excerpted from the same manuscript that gives us the Daniel play.
The sacred chants segue into the Daniel play, as the liturgists become singing actors, employing simple costuming, movement and gesture in the service of the miracle tale.
The production, as currently envisioned, is made of: seven principal singers: Daniel, Belshazzar, Darius, two Envious Men, the Queen/Angel; one Courtier and the Narrator; two instrumentalists (performing on vielle, harp, and percussion); a dancer; all supported by Peter Torpey’s deeply evocative lighting and special effects.
Pedagogical Opportunities: Daniel was conceived in the Middle Ages as a student play, of and by young people; Camerata’s production incorporates and develops this basic idea. And so the other participants in the liturgy and the play (satraps, soldiers, queen and queen’s court/angels) can also be recruited among local students, choristers, children’s choir, and other musical participants in your community.
Preparing and performing The Play of Daniel touches on and involves a whole series of disciplines: musicology (history of music, paleography, musical notation, techniques of transcription); performance practice (vocal technique, different contemporary approaches to medieval music, questions of accompaniment); theology and liturgy (the relation of the play to the liturgical calendar; the place Daniel in the manuscript BL Egerton 2615); the history of theater (medieval plays and their place in ecclesiastical life; surviving documentation concerning staging and performance), the place of rejected and marginalized people. This project could be the perfect residency project for your community, school, university, church, choir.
Anne Azéma will guide the preparation of this project with local musicians and their directors in your community. Final rehearsal periods will be conducted later, with the Camerata musicians and crew, and on location.
Dates: Early 2025
Venue: to be determined; a liturgical space, welcomed.
Budgets: please be in touch with us. All logistical questions will be discussed and resolved according to your wishes and possibilities.
Contact:
Anne Azéma, Artistic Director, director@bostoncamerata.org
Victoria Bocchicchio, Administrator, admin@bostoncamerata.org