Let’s get this out of the way first – I’m not that familiar with opera, aside from its appearance in some quality Warner Brothers cartoons (“What’s Opera, Doc?” and “Rabbit of Seville” foremost among them). Please read what follows understanding that I may well miss the nuance and flavor of the project in question.
Today Wired reports that you can now get the music from the opera commissioned to note the sesquicentennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species. The opera is called “Tomorrow, In a Year” and premiered last fall in Copenhagen. The location for the premiere seems appropriate, given the role Copenhagen played in another intersection of art and science (also adapted for television).
You can listen to one of the opera selections, “Colouring of Pigeons,” online. It’s not at all clear from that website how to get the full opera score. However, it is available in physical form from at least on online retailer, and available for download from several places. I can’t speak to the opera’s libretto, but the music is pretty challenging, with a fair amount of natural sounds sampled for the track that I heard. I wouldn’t recommend this for background music, at least if you want to get the full effect.
