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.


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