- 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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