Rotaru, Diana

Diana Rotaru – Three Lears – mini-tragedia buffa for three musicians-actors (2018)

Diana Rotaru (b. 1981, Bucharest)

has written from chamber and orchestral music to chamber opera, multimedia or dance shows and short film soundtracks. Her music explores different expressive directions, such as hypnagogia, imaginary folklore or humor. She has also been active as a promoter of new music in Romania, being the artistic director of SonoMania new music ensemble (since 2012) and the main coordinator of the Romanian Music Information Center (CIMRO). Diana Rotaru is currently teaching at the National University of Music in Bucharest, where she studied with Ştefan Niculescu and Dan Dediu (2000-2005); she later studied with Frédéric Durieux at the CNSMDP (2005-2006). She received residencies in Paris, Winterthur and Vienna and won numerous prizes, among which the Romanian Academy’s George Enescu Award (2010), the ISCM-IAMIC Young Composer Award (World Music Days, Vilnius, 2008), the Irino Prize (Japan, 2004) or the George Enescu Prize ex-aequo (Romania, 2003 and 2005). Her works have been commissioned by Ensemble XXI (Dijon), Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Pärlor för svin, Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Takefu International Music Festival etc. In 2019 she was elected President of the ISCM Romanian Section and Artistic Director of MERIDIAN international new music festival.

Website: dianarotaru.net

Three Lears – mini-tragedia buffa for three musicians-actors (2018)

The characters in Three Lears are the “mad trio” from Shakespeare’s famous play: Lear (a madman with the mask of lucidity), The Fool (the voice of Reason under the mask of humor) and Poor Tom (the rational man disguised as a madman). I have turned them into three versions of King Lear, three projections of the damned monarch: viola, horn and trombone. I took some small fragments from the play and I transformed them into an absurd script that follows its own chronology (Act I.4, III.2, III.6). The four parts of the work are played without interruption: 1. The Mad King; 2. Threnody for a Fool (Passacaglia lugubre); 3. Intermezzo: Fanfara(de); 4. The Judgment. The work is written for the wonderful musicians that form the Wahnsinn Trio: Marius Ungureanu, Barrie Webb and Erik Sandberg.

Read full Romanian preface > HERE