Old Deerfield Productions
Presents a workshop performance of
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AND: Convent of Saint Rose of Lima, many years later. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is an investigation into the lives of five people who are suddenly killed when a bridge collapses into a deep gorge in the Peruvian Andes of 1714. One witness of the disaster, Brother Juniper, a monk with aspirations for theology to become an exact science, uses the fall of the BRIDGE as his laboratory to prove that God specifically chose those five people upon that day for His demonstration of wisdom. However, as the opera reveals, the lives and personalities involved are more complex than one human mind can know. Brother Juniper writes an enormous book full of conflicting facts about the victims and after it is finished both he and his book are burned at the stake for heresy. Many years later, the one remaining copy of the book turns up at the Convent of Saint Rose of Lima where the Abbess chooses it to read to the sick and dying patients in her hospital. Abbess Madre María del Pilar of the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas - mezzo-soprano * Doña María, the Marquesa de Montemayor - contralto Doña Clara, the Condesa d'Abuirre, her daughter - coloratura * Pepita - soubrette Camila La Perichole - dramatic soprano * Esteban - bass-baritone Manuel - baritone * Uncle Pio - tenor Captain Alvarado - bass * Jaime, Camila's son and Orchestra with double winds Developed with permission from the Literary Estate of Thornton Wilder. |
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at the American Literary Conference in Boston, Mass,
Chair:Jackson R. Bryer, University of Maryland 2. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey, A Book That Sings," Paula Kimper, Composer/Independent Scholar 3. "Italian Inspirations for The Ides of March: Alfredo Panzini and Lauro de Bosis," Dianna Pickens, Universita degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa |
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under the musical direction of Stephen M. Smith Suite from The Bridge of San Luis Rey Western Connecticut University 181 White Street, Danbury, CT |
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on Saturday June 21, 2003 at 7:30 p.m. New Salem, Massachusetts' 1794 Meetinghouse presents a Concert Reading of excerpts from the opera The Bridge of San Luis Rey A new opera by Paula M. Kimper, Based on Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. sending five people to their deaths, he sets out to discover "Why these five?". www.1794meetinghouse.org |
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FIRST CHANCE CONCERT READINGS: April 19-20, 2005 @ South Oxford Space June 21, 2003 @ 1794 Meetinghouse March 28, 2003 @ South Oxford Space March 16, 2003 @ Manhattan School of Music Febrary 28 and March 1, 2003 @ South Oxford Space April 19, 2002 @ The Lighthouse March 1 and 2, 2002 @ South Oxford Space December 9 and 10, 2000 @ South Oxford Space www.operaprojects.org |
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"The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is an opera about love in its many forms, as shown through an investigation into the lives of five people who are suddenly killed when a bridge collapses into a deep gorge in the Peruvian Andes in 1714. Musically, the opera's palette is extremely diverse. The back-drop of the story, the world of geological time, reflects the forces of nature, wind, birds, and mountain gods, and is expressed with ancient shamanic instruments of the high Andes. Added to this is the "story world" of 18th-century Spanish theater music and opera, Italian masses and secular motets, Spanish and Andean folk music, sea shanties, and the interesting mix of these that has become what we know of today as Peruvian music, with the conflict of merging cultures embedded within it. The libretto draws primarily on the rich and the lyrical American prose of Thornton Wilder: the sermons, poems, lessons, lyrics, reflections, anecdotes, questions and observations in his novel. But it also uses the native Andean language of Quechua, the Spanish of Calderon, Moretto, and Lope de Vega, and the Latin of the Bible. For example the opening choral piece combines a Spanish Ave Maria with a Quechuan song to Pachamama, the Andean mother earth. A "secret" language of rhythms and signs exists between Manuel and Esteban. The opera is an investigation into faith and the will of God. It is a contemplation of religious beliefs and an expression of the underlying spiritual connection that exists in us all, the bridge that links us one to another: loving. The whole world is a narrow bridge, all our lives hang on this fragile passage, and the bridge is love. |
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"Music sends words deeply into memory, that is the magic of opera. I don't easily remember words but if I set them to music I never forget them! Making this opera is a deep ritual of memorization. I take the words in and music attaches to them that I can hear. It is a great comfort to me to hear these songs and I hope that by making them audible they might also bring comfort to others." -- PMK |