Myths and Hymns
Music and Lyrics Adam Guettel
Music and Lyrics Adam Guettel
Myths and Hymns is a song cycle by Adam Guettel that blends Greek mythology with hymns from an 1886 Presbyterian hymnal to explore themes of ambition, death, relationships, and spirituality through diverse musical styles.
About The Play
About The Play
Additional performances added on Monday, 30 April and Monday, 7 May 2007
A top West End cast in the European premiere of Myths and Hymns, a song cycle by America’s hottest new composer Adam Guettel.
Originally produced by the Public Theater / New York Shakespeare Festival in 1998, Myths and Hymns interweaves stories from Greek mythology with lyrics from an 1886 Presbyterian hymnal that the composer unearthed in a second-hand bookshop, creating a modern-day song cycle which journeys from the spare classicism of 19th century New England puritanism, through romantic art song, to Latin, gospel and R&B.
Lyrically inventive, complex and meaningful, this modern-day song cycle explores some very personal yet universal preoccupations: ambition, death, the breakdown of relationships, and ideas about heaven, hell and gods old and new. Myths and Hymns paints an emotional, sometimes harsh, but beautiful landscape of faith and yearning. This is explosive, dynamic and challenging musical theatre.
Performed by arrangement with Josef Weinberger Limited on behalf of R & H Theatricals of New York