Occident Meets Orient

This recording explores societal attitudes and misconceptions about life in Eastern cultures through Western classical and popular music of the 19th and 20th centuries. Fascinated by the East, Western composers of opera, operetta, musical theater, art song and popular dance-inspired tunes were influenced by a trend now known as Orientalism; the construction of a mythic Eastern stereotype through music, visual art, poetry, and other cultural texts. Soprano Carole FitzPatrick, baritone Robert Barefield and pianist Russell Ryan have collaborated in discovering, performing and now recording these songs that reflect Western society's fascination, ambivalence and misconceptions of the East.