- Intermezzo
- 2009 Season
- Plot Synopses and
Background Information
Riders
to the Sea
by
Ralph
Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), based
on the play by J.M. Syng
Riders
to the Sea
is a one-act opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on the play of the same name
by the Irish author John Millington Synge. Vaughan Williams set Synge's text
essentially intact, with only a small number of changes. The composer completed
the score in 1927, but it was not premiered until 1 December 1937, at the Royal
College of Music, London. The
work is generally regarded as Vaughan Williams's most successful opera. Vaughan
Williams deliberately avoided use of folksong in the music, and instead relied
on the rhythms inherent in Synge's text for the composition.
This concentrated stage work, only thirty-five minutes long, has
been called the "English Pelléas," for its sensitivity to the rhythm
of language. The poetic rhythms and
images of Synge's Aran island fisher folk found their perfect complement in
Vaughan Williams' supple, impressionistic music.
Synopsis:
Before the opera has begun, Maurya, an elderly Irishwoman, has lost her husband,
father-in-law, and four of her six sons at sea. At the start of the opera, her
daughters Nora and Cathleen receive word that a body that may be their brother
Michael, Maurya's fifth son, has washed up on shore in Donegal, far to the
north. The sixth and last son, Bartley, is planning to go to Galway fair to sell
horses. Maurya is fearful of the sea winds and pleas with Bartley to stay. But
Bartley insists on going and will ride "on the red mare with the grey pony
behind him". Maurya predicts that by nightfall she will have no living
sons, and her daughters chide her for sending Bartley off with an ill word.
Maurya goes after Bartley to bless his voyage. Nora and Cathleen receive
clothing from the drowned corpse that confirms it as their brother. Maurya
returns home, claiming to have seen the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley
and begins lamenting the loss of the men in her family to the sea. Nora then
sees villagers carrying a load, which turns out to be the corpse of Bartley, who
has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned. The opera closes with
Maurya's lament: They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea
can do to me.
The
Prodigal Son
by
Benjamin
Britten (1913-1976), libretto by William Plomer
The
Prodigal Son is the third
of Britten’s three Church Parables and was inspired by Rembrandt’s painting The
Return of the Prodigal which Britten had seen two years earlier on a trip
to Leningrad. Completed in 1968, and like its two predecessors, set to a
libretto by William Plomer. The style presentation is consistent with the
conventions established in Curlew River and The Burning Fiery
Furnace, but the work marks a significant advance on its predecessors. New
colours are provided by the mellow tones of the alto flute, primarily associated
with the pastoral tranquility of the father’s home and by the small trumpet in
D which accompanies the Tempter’s promises of excitement. The theme of an
errant adolescent returning home the wiser from his travels is familiar from Albert
Herring and it is perhaps significant that The Prodigal Son is the
most traditionally ‘operatic’ of the three Parables..
The first performance took place on 10
June 1968 in Orford Church, Suffolk. The original cast included Peter
Pears as the Tempter, Robert Tear as the Younger Son, John Shirley-Quirk as the
Father, and Bryan Drake as the Elder Son. Colin Graham was the stage
director and set designer. Intermezzo will be modeling its production
after Mr. Graham's original staging and dedicating the performance to his
memory.
The story mirrors that of the Lost Son
found in Luke 15:11-32. Jesus tells the story of a man who has two sons.
The younger demands his share of his inheritance while his father is still
living, and goes off to a distant country where he wastes his substance with
riotous living, and eventually has to take work as a swine herder. There he
comes to his senses, and determines to return home and throw himself on his
father's mercy. But when he returns home, his father greets him with open
arms. The father orders the "fatted calf" to be killed to
celebrate his return. The older brother becomes jealous at the favored treatment
of his faithless brother and upset at the lack of reward for his own
faithfulness. But the father responds: "Son, thou art ever with me, and all
that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for
this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."
This work is rarely performed and has not
been seen in the Boston area in nearly thirty years. Intermezzo is very
pleased to have underwriting support from the Britten Estate to mount this
production.
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