Paul Corfield Godfrey's "Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings"

5 April
2025-4-5 5:22:37 PM UTC

As we get closer to the release of Paul Corfield Godfrey's "Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings", we are proud to announce the complete cast of the production. Thirty four singers performing more than 75 characters, over 17 hours of music on fifteen CDs. Our cast announcement video below has the entire cast list plus the eagle eyes among you will notice that Ted Nasmith has yet again allowed his incredible artwork to adorn Paul's cycles.

Presented by Zarathustra (The Paul Corfield Godfrey Trust), Volante Opera Productions and Prima Facie, this work represents a life's work, began nearly fifty years ago in its original form by the composer and follows his successful five part series adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion^{Available from https://www.volanteopera.wales/category/all-products[1]} across ten CDs and more than ten hours of music.

We will soon announce the release date and make pre-orders available and over on our Discord we will be offering a small discount for those who order using a discount code unique to their handle there. Plus, three of those pre-orders will receive an exclusive poster, signed by the cast and composer.^{Chosen randomly.[2]} Join us using https://discord.gg/TywvTS6Y to be sure to receive the discount and to be in with a chance of wining one of those signed posters.

Details of the release date will be announced soon.

¹ Available from https://www.volanteopera.wales/category/all-products ↩

² Chosen randomly. ↩

DMRoberts

18 hours ago
2025-4-5 11:57:27 PM UTC

That's a really interesting adaptation choice to have the Barrow-wight be sung by a woman. Given the remark by Tom about the brooch he picks out from the treasure, one might reasonably guess that its owner ended up as the—or at least a—wight in the barrow. I'm aware of the line "[Some say that the mound in which the Ring-bearer was imprisoned had been the grave of the last prince of Cardolan, who fell in the war of 1409.]", brackets in the original, which are noted at the start of Appendix A to denote "insertions of a later date". This tracks with Merry's flashback of being speared in the chest after being rescued. Having the last prince of Cardolan buried with his family wouldn't be too much of a stretch in any case, though one wonders why and how the last prince of Cardolan was given an elaborate burial after the kingdom fell.

But, to the actual topic of the thread, this release looks to be epic, in both senses of the word.

onthetrail
Home away from home

17 hours ago
2025-4-6 12:38:52 AM UTC

DMRoberts wrote:
That's a really interesting adaptation choice to have the Barrow-wight be sung by a woman. Given the remark by Tom about the brooch he picks out from the treasure, one might reasonably guess that its owner ended up as the—or at least a—wight in the barrow. I'm aware of the line "[Some say that the mound in which the Ring-bearer was imprisoned had been the grave of the last prince of Cardolan, who fell in the war of 1409.]", brackets in the original, which are noted at the start of Appendix A to denote "insertions of a later date". This tracks with Merry's flashback of being speared in the chest after being rescued. Having the last prince of Cardolan buried with his family wouldn't be too much of a stretch in any case, though one wonders why and how the last prince of Cardolan was given an elaborate burial after the kingdom fell.

But, to the actual topic of the thread, this release looks to be epic, in both senses of the word.

Thanks DMRoberts. Paul had written some of these, in fact from memory I believe all of the vocal style choices were decided on at least 30 years ago. Having listened through the entire cycle at least a few times by now I am very pleased with the choices he made. The Wight sung by a female voice gives it a very gothic style that appeals to me and sounds very sinister.

You probably noticed too that Gwaihir is also sung by a female voice, and again it adds texture that is very interesting and helps balance the range of voices. Of course in opera this has been happening for many years, to add vocal ranges to a work. Paul in his stage direction doesn't change genders, the choices of vocal style are strictly to break up an often baritone or tenor heavy work.

As to the project being epic, that it certainly is, in so many respects.
By the time of completion we will have collectively clocked in a few thousand hours of work to prepare this for release.

Paul Corfield Godfrey's "Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings"

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