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Three Tales



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Three Tales by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot is an amazing video opera.

Three Tales was first preformed in 2002 and is an excellent reference for Performance Arts and Citizenship. It shows how a composer and video artist can work with archive footage to bring alive issues of today.

The Pathe Archive has newsreel footage of the Hindenburg disaster and the tests on Bikini Atoll - just search by keyword.

Notes © Marshall Mateer, for RBCs. Updated January 2004

Three Tales is presented in three parts:

the Hindenburg airship disaster in 1937 - issues of the faliability of technology.
the Atom bomb tests on Bikini Atoll between 1946-1954 - issues of technology used for destruction and its effects on the indigenous people of the Bikini Islands.
the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1997 - issues of genetic engineering and robotics. Interviewees include: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Marvin Minsky.



Steve Reich

As well as the historical footage the opera makes use of interviews, digital images and text and intertwines them into the sounds of a musical score played live by a large orchestra,chorus and electronic instruments while the visuals are projected on huge screens. Reich uses slow motion sound - which allows one to see and hear people speaking in slow motion without changing the pitch of what they say. Another new "technique, freeze frame sound is the sound equivalent of a film freeze frame in that a single vowel or consonant is extended for a long time leaving a kind of audible vapor trail behind each speaker that becomes part of the overall harmony." In addition, a talking robot has an important role. Many of these effects are only possible through digital manipiulation of sound.

"A huge achievement, visually and musically, which gets more and more engrossing as it goes on...the visual effects are thrillingly virtuostic." The Guardian.

Steve Reich is one of world's best known composers. Visit Steve Reich's website for his biography, discography and the complete liberetto to Three Tales.
Beryl Korot is one of the pioneers of video art. Check out Beryl Korot Beryl Korot

Buy the DVD Three Tales (Nonesuch 7559798352) Nonesuch Records