Tonight, Saturday 5th April, Tim Murray will be conducting the opening night performance of pioneering sound artist Matthew Herbert’s The Crackle at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House. Herbert adapts Faust’s legend; when a stranger offers a music teacher powerful technology, he hastily accepts, with horrifying consequences…

Star Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has recorded the voice of Méphistophélès. The opera mixes live and electronic music, features the ‘Chirp’ app allowing audience members to share links via sounds, and a on-stage machinery developed by MIT.

Tim Murray said to Classic FM about conducting this live electronic feat:

It’s quite a tricky piece to conduct, as there is a lot of technology to understand. What I see in my score doesn’t necessarily show what the music sounds like; for example if someone plays a ‘C’, it might produce a ‘C’, or the sound of a buzzing phone, or the creaking branches of a tree. I still do a double-take when I see Tom, our drummer, playing the dripping taps – especially yesterday when he sprung a leak in the rehearsal… Sometimes they play a ‘D’ and out comes a recording of Bryn Terfel! We recorded Bryn last week – he is the voice of Méphistophélès in the show – and the audience will certainly feel his presence…

The Crackle runs from 5-12 April 2014.

Tim Murray and Bryn Terfel Courtesy of The Crackle, © ROH