Love's Labour's Lost (opera)
Love's Labour's Lost | |
---|---|
Opera by Nicolas Nabokov | |
Librettist | |
Language | English |
Based on | Love's Labour's Lost by Shakespeare |
Premiere | February 7, 1973 Brussels |
Love's Labour's Lost is an opera by Nicolas Nabokov, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. It was first performed in Brussels on 7 February 1973.
History
While Nabokov was in New York, preparing a ballet revival, Lincoln Kirstein initiated talks with W. H. Auden who was looking for an opera project and had already contacted Michael Tippett and Harrison Birtwistle.[1] The composer read Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost again, and found similarities to Mozart's Così fan tutte in its "stylized, deliberately artificial plot".[2] Auden and Nabokov discussed the project in February 1969.[2] Auden won Chester Kallman to participate, as before for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers. In his foreword to an edition of Shakespeare's play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jonathan Bate muses that they were possibly inspired by Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus, in which the fictional hero composes his single opera based on this same play, intended to be "in a spirit of the most artificial mockery and parody of the artificial, something highly playful and highly precious".[3]
The
The opera premiered in Brussels on 7 February 1973. A German version, Verlorene Liebesmüh, was written by Claus H. Henneberg,[6] but performances in Berlin shortly after the premiere were in English, because the singers were reluctant to learn yet another language.[2]
Roles
Role | Voice type | Premiere cast, 7 February 1973[2] Conductor: Reinhard Peters |
---|---|---|
Rosaline | dramatic soprano | Lou Ann Wyckoff |
Katherine | lyric soprano | |
Jaquenetta | coloratura soprano | Carol Malone |
Moth | lyric soprano (contralto) | David Knudsen |
Princess | coloratura mezzo-soprano | Patricia Johnson[7] |
Dumaine | tenor | |
Berowne | high baritone | Barry McDaniel |
Don Armado | baritone | George Fortune |
King | baritone | |
Boyet | bass | Manfred Röhrl [7] |
References
- ISBN 9780049280441.
- ^ ISBN 9780199399895.
- ISBN 978-0230217911.
- ^ Central Opera Service Bulletin
- ^ Sander, Peter (2000). Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (PDF). Hofstra University. p. 17.
- ^ "Nabokoff, Nicholas / Love's Labours Lost (1973)". Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
- ^ ISBN 9780786477289.