Rappaccini's Daughter
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An opera based on the short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Developed at the Eugene O’Neill Center and later at the Minnesota Opera, it was a finalist in the New York City Opera Competition.
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Scored for
4 woodwinds, string quartet, piano, harp, french horn Libretto Linsey Abrams Premiere
August, 12 1981 O'Neill Theater Center, Waterford CT |
Performances
1983 Minnesota Opera Workshop Phillip Brunelle, conductor 1984 Lake George Opera 2013 Essential Voices USA's "The Composer and Librettist Speak" series Judith Clurman, music director 2014 Theater for the New City Jonathan Fox Powers, music director Douglas McDonnell, Giovanni Samantha Britt , Beatrice |
From Linsey and Michael: An acknowledgement
Thanks go to the New York City Opera, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Lake George Opera, The Minnesota Opera, and the Gamma Fisher Foundation for early support. John Flaxman and Paulette Haupt were indispensable partners in earlier stages of this work, and deserve our immense gratitude. Several scenes of the newly minted one-act opera, were presented as part of Essential Voices USA’s “The Composer and Librettist Speak” series, in June, 2013, thanks to Musical Director and Conductor Judith Clurman. A fully staged performance with piano accompaniment was presented at The Theater for the New City directed by Lissa Moira. |
Theater for the New City: Beatrice (Britt, foreground) with Giovanni (McDonnell) and Lizbetta (Dunn). |
Theater for the New City: Giovanni and Beatrice confront Rappaccini (Broderick), as Baglioni (Fisher) looks on. |
Poster from Theater for the New City's performance of Rappaccini's Daughter
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Playbill from the Fourth Annual O'Neill Composer/Librettist Conference
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Newspaper clipping from announcing the Minnesota Opera's workshop production of Rappaccini's Opera
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Essential Voices USA poster
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Reviews
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In the circles I frequent, Michael Cohen is much admired as the composer of “Das Chicago Song,” the delirious, pitch-perfect pastiche of Weill songs that Madeline Kahn sang in her New York debut, her Broadway debut, and her audition for Blazing Saddles. Michael also helped Madeline to prepare “Glitter and Be Gay,” Cunegonde’s tour-de-force aria in Bernstein’s Candide; she used the number to audition for the New York Philharmonic’s concert performance in 1968, rendering moot any question whether she was up to the demands of the song. “She was not foolin’ around,” stage director Sheldon Patinkin remembered. “She wanted that part.”*
Michael has written all sorts of other music, too: instrumental, music-theater, opera, and perhaps most notably, three pieces based on the story of Anne Frank (Yours, Anne, I Am Anne Frank, and I Remember). This month, New York’s Theater for the New City saw Michael’s opera Rappaccini’s Daughter (to a libretto by Linsey Abrams, based on Hawthorne’s short story) in fully staged performance to piano accompaniment — and I could easily picture Madeline in the role of Lizbetta, the wily landlady. Lissa Moira’s production was one of the most lavish I’ve ever seen in such circumstances, and I got a clear idea how effectively Rappaccini could transfer to an opera house. My introduction to Michael’s music, “Das Chicago Song,” may be a spoof, but Rappaccini is an opera, all right, and Michael isn’t foolin’ around. Michael’s score is gratifyingly Late Romantic, in which passions are expressed fully but more coolly than they would have been in Hawthorne’s time. Though Michael’s approach is thoroughly contemporary, there’s nothing cynical in this music and the way it tells this story: it’s as if the score shares the characters’ feelings yet understands them differently. Amid the Debussian atmospherics, full-throated arias and love duets pop out, and Abrams’ libretto, with its steadfast reliance on rhyme, supports the music’s tonality. She and Michael aren’t reinventing the art form; they’re adapting traditional forms to their own purposes. And I’m eager to hear what Michael will do with the orchestration. —William Madison |
Rappaccini’s Daughter: Opera Blooms at Theatre for the New City
I was utterly enchanted by Michael Cohen’s (music) and Linsey Abrams’ (librettist) new version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dark fairy tale, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Happily eschewing the avant-garde movement, composer Michael Cohen chose to honor the rich melodic vocabulary of the masters such as Debussy and Sondheim, while claiming his own place, creating a piece that soars to exotic and sensual heights. Just as importantly, Abrams’ libretto provided a timely take on the classic tale, both romantic and intellectual in its arguments. The clever rhyming advances the plot — inventively and seamlessly. –Melody Breyer-Grell |