| Flamma Flamma – The Fire Requiem | |
| Type: | studio |
| Longtype: | 1st part of The Accacha Chronicles (European cover version) |
| Artist: | Nicholas Lens |
| Cover: | Album Flamma Flamma cover.jpg |
| Released: | 1994, re-release 2002 |
| Genre: | Contemporary classical |
| Length: | 75:24 |
| Label: | Sony Classical - Sony BMG |
| Producer: | Nicholas Lens |
Flamma Flamma – The Fire Requiem is a music drama by Nicholas Lens. It is the first part of the operatic trilogy The Accacha Chronicles. The work was artistically and financially produced by the composer himself and gained international fame when Sony Classical bought the rights in 1994 for worldwide distribution.
According to Time magazine, Flamma Flamma is among those compositions of contemporary classic music "breaking down the established divisions between popular and so-called serious music" as "[w]ith its visceral strength and sustained emotional drive, Flamma Flamma has won a loyal audience and critical favor."[1]
The score has been used a numerous times for art-firework-performances and hundreds of dance and ballet creations all over the world. Lens, who considers himself (in interviews) more a fan of severe contemporary dance and moving theatre (Lens is Belgian born and has been influenced by the contemporary Flemish-Belgian dance scene), was not always happy with these adaptations. More than ten years after the original creation Nicholas Lens rewrote the score completely. This new, operatic and more extended and purely acoustic version, which seems far more complex in rhythm and tonality (read: a-tonality), -published in 2005 by Schott Music International (Mainz/New York) as first part of 'The Accacha Chronicles'- did not premiere yet.
| Flamma Flamma -The Fire Requiem | |
| Type: | studio |
| Longtype: | 1st part of The Accacha Chronicles (American cover version) |
| Artist: | Nicholas Lens |
| Cover: | Album Flamma Flamma American cover.jpg |
| Released: | 1994 |
| Genre: | Contemporary classical |
| Length: | 75:24 |
| Label: | Sony Classical |
| Producer: | Nicholas Lens |
In 1995 Sony Classical USA released an American cover version of the work. Sony Classical USA considered that the European cover, based on the labyrinth of Chartres (France), (originally a huge painting by the Japanese/Belgian artist Peter Bal) was too intellectual and arty for the American market. The American cover with the doubled androgynous angel face was designed by the New York artist Amy Guip. The change of cover was criticised in the American press.