---

Programme Note

With the approaching millennium and the very timely events of the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb and the recent scientific breakthroughs in cloning, the Prometheus story seems very topical for our times. Questions arising about man playing God and the re-awakening of Frankenstein all come together, as man tries not only to discover the secrets of life and death, but tries to uncover the ultimate mystery of controlling one's self. Conceived as a companion piece to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Forbidden Fire is a 22-minute exploration of dangerous or forbidden knowledge, as represented by the Promethean metaphor of stealing fire from the gods. Fragments of works by Aeschylus, Lucretius, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Schiller, Beethoven, Percy and Mary Shelley and Edna St. Vincent Millay are intercut with writings from an Egyptian temple, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible to trace the exhilaration as well as the serious consequences of man's eternal quest for knowledge.

-- Robert Xavier Rodríguez