An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (opera)

Last updated

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
radio opera by Thea Musgrave
Thea Musgrave 2017 - St Brides, London.jpg
Thea Musgrave (2017)
LibrettistMusgrave
LanguageEnglish
Based on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce (1890)
Premiere
14 September 1982 (1982-09-14)
BBC Radio 3, London

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a one-act radio opera composed by Scottish-born American composer Thea Musgrave. [1] Musgrave also wrote the libretto, basing it on the 1890 short story of the same name by Ambrose Bierce. [2] The opera, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation, premiered on BBC Radio 3 in 1982. [3] The first stage performance was in 1988. [4]

Contents

Musgrave, who has lived in the United States since 1972, [5] said she would not have been able to write the opera without having lived in the American South and gotten a feel for its language. [6] Musgrave dedicated the opera to her husband, Peter Mark, who was artistic director of the Virginia Opera for thirty-five years. [7] [8]

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera said Occurence was "a true radio opera, evolving its own narrative modes and taking imaginative account of the limitations and potentialities of the medium." [9] Brian Morton said of the staged production "Musgrave's scoring for baritone, speakers, tape, and orchestra is as daring a use for voice in Britain this century and the equal of anything done by Benjamin Britten." [10]

Synopsis

First page of Ambrose Bierce's short story as published in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 1891.jpg
First page of Ambrose Bierce's short story as published in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

Setting: Alabama, 1860s during the Civil War.

Peyton Farquhar (baritone) is a Southern plantation owner in Alabama, then part of the Confederate States of America. [11] Farquhar is to be hanged by the Union army for trying to burn a railroad bridge. As he is dropped, the rope breaks, he escapes, and Farquhar returns home. [12] The last line of the opera reveals, as does Bierce's story, that the escape was a fantasy and Farquhar died on the gallows. [11] [13]

Farquhar is the only singing part, the narrator speaks rather than sings. [14] [15]

Performances

Musgrave conducted the London Sinfonietta in the premiere on BBC Radio 3. [7] [16] The broadcast, on September 14, 1982, featured Jake Gardner as Farquhar and Gayle Hunnicutt as the narrator. [7] (Gardner had created the role of James Stewart in the original production of Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots in 1977.) [17] David Healy and Ed Bishop also had speaking parts. [18] The original production included a pre-recorded track of nature sounds. [7] The broadcast was released on compact disc by NMC Recordings in 2011. [19]

The review in Gramophone said Occurence "sounds like a 12-tone revival of Bonanza being interpreted by the cast and crew of The Archers " and "much of Musgrave’s music is 'incidental' in the worst possible sense: chords have no function other than as scene-setting prompts; dialogue is underpinned with pointless ostinatos. And that no one shows much awareness of how ridiculous the caricatured American accents sound, or what a twee and hollow response this is to Bierce’s text, is unforgivable." [20] MusicWeb International's review said "the sung passages of this remarkable work achieve real lyricism, expressiveness and a most moving intensity" and Gardner "is transformed, both by the music and by his own remarkable talent, into an eloquent, passionate man whose character we can believe in and whose story moves and inspires us." [21]

The first staged production was on June 23, 1988, at South Hill Park, Bracknell, Berkshire, during the Wilde Festival of Music. [13] The opera was presented on a double bill with William Walton's The Bear . [13] George Badacsonyi conducted the production by his Thameside Opera and Dominic Barber directed. [13] Brian Rayner Cook played Farquhar and Sarah Connolly was his wife. [13] The recorded nature sounds were omitted from this production. [13] The same year, the Cheltenham Music Festival also presented Thameside Opera's production, again with Cook as Farquhar. [22] [23]

The American premiere in an unstaged performance was January 18, 1986, by the College-Conservatory of Music Wind Symphony at the University of Cincinnati. [24] The first staged American performance was December 1, 2001, in New York City, presented by Operaworks. [11]

Roles

Roles, voice types, BBC premiere, Wilde Festival
Role Voice type BBC premiere, 1982 [11]
Conductor: Thea Musgrave		Wilde Festival, 1988 [13]
Conductor: George Badacsonyi
Peyton Farquhar baritone Jake GardnerBrian Rayner Cook
Narrator (Farquhar's wife)spoken Gayle Hunnicutt Sarah Connolly

See also

References

  1. ↑ Griffel, Margaret Ross (2013). Operas in English: A Dictionary. Vol. 1. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 351. ISBN   9780810883253 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  2. ↑ Griffel 2013, p. 351.
  3. ↑ Hixon, Donald L. (1984). Thea Musgrave: A Bio-bibliography. Bio-bibliographies in Music, No. 1. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 7. ISBN   0313237085 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  4. ↑ Driver, Paul (September 1988). "British Opera Diary: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Opera . Vol. 39, no. 9. London: Opera Magazine, Ltd. pp. 1124–25. ISSN   0030-3526.
  5. ↑ Preston, Katherine K. (1986). "Thea Musgrave". In Hitchcock, H. Wiley; Sadie, Stanley (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Vol. 3. London: Macmillan. p. 288–89. ISBN   0943818362 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  6. ↑ Kirk, Elise K. (2001). American Opera. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 368. ISBN   9780252026232 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Hixon 1984, p. 7.
  8. ↑ Elster, Robert J., ed. (2017). "Peter Mark". International Who's Who in Classical Music, 2017 (33rd ed.). Abington, England: Routledge. p. 566. ISBN   9781857438925 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  9. ↑ Cole, Hugo (1994). "Thea Musgrave". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera . Vol. 3. London: Macmillan. p. 524–25. ISBN   0935859926.
  10. ↑ Morton, Brian (September 1988). "Ancestral Voices". Wire Magazine . No. 55. p. 8–9. ISSN   0952-0686 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Griffel 2013, p. 352.
  12. ↑ Cole, Hugo (1994). "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera . Vol. 3. London: Macmillan. p. 644–45. ISBN   0935859926.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Driver 1988, p. 1124.
  14. ↑ Wlaschin, Ken (2024). Encyclopedia of American Opera. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 283. ISBN   9781476612386 . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  15. ↑ Owen 1994, p. 644.
  16. ↑ Adam, Nicky, ed. (1993). Who's Who in British Opera. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press. p. 199. ISBN   0859678946.
  17. ↑ Wlaschin 2024, p. 139.
  18. ↑ Hedley, William (June 11, 2011). "Recording of the Month: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". MusicWeb International. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  19. ↑ Gramophone (July 2017). "Archers, Goons, Bonanza and Beckett collide in an American Civil War opera". Gramophone . London. ISSN   0017-310X . Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  20. ↑ Gramophone 2011.
  21. ↑ Hedley 2011.
  22. ↑ Morton 1988, p. 9.
  23. ↑ Wise Music Classical (2025). "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Wise Music Classical. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  24. ↑ Wise Music Classical 2025.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.