SKU: CF.CY1848F

ISBN 9781491144404. UPC: 680160901906.

With some trepidation, Talma wrote her own libretto for the 1976 chamber opera Have You Heard? Do You Know?, a work about the Cold War and the desire for utopias (when the bomb drops, where would you run to?). For Talma, who lived a great part of her life in the hustle-bustle of Manhattan, this opera may have been reflective of her joy in spending time at the peaceful woods of the MacDowell Colony. While she referred to the opera as amusing, it may well have been autobiographical to a large extent.

SKU: BT.MUSM570362127

English.

Luis Tinoco (Composer) and Stephen Plaice (Libretto) wrote 'Paint Me', and Opera for six singers and Chamber Orchestra. Rui Horta and Joana Carneiro are responsible for the stage direction and the musical direction. My idea in writing Paint Me was to bring together six characters, all of whom have a prolific imaginative interior life, and to explore what they would make of each other in the confines of a railway compartment. The model for my libretto is Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The travellers in Paint Me are also on their way to Canterbury, but they are strangers thrown together by the randomness of modern travel. Their tales are not told publicly, but in theirown imaginations. Most journeys in the modern age are anonymous and conducted in silence. We have only a visual or perhaps manneristic impression of the people sitting opposite us. This introspection in public opens up a private fantasy space, in which our fellow travellers can become the characters in instant psychological dramatisations.I wanted to formalize each character’s fantasy into a full narrative. The result is a kind of anthology of operatic short stories, surrounded by the framework of an ordinary journey.     - Stephen Plaice.