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Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan An Operetta in two acts and a prologue by W.H. Auden set to music by Benjamin Britten Op.17 Published by Faber (F0333) Size is 5x7 approx 39 pages Green Paper Cover with Black Print. Dated 1976 This I belive is First Edition Libretto The condition is New. Unused (Old Store Stock) I have 3 copies available 1st edition of this Libretto MiniboxEE(3)
- GenresMusic
96 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1976
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9 people want to read
About the author
W.H. Auden
596 books1,075 followersPoems, published in such collections as
Look, Stranger!
(1936) and
The Shield of Achilles
(1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 14, 2016
For his first opera, the extremely British composer chose another extremely British poet to be his librettist and a legendary American folkloric tale to evoke the birth and development of the United States from a sheer empty wilderness only containing wild beasts. There is a lot to say about this version of this campfire tale, a favorite of all YMCA summer camps, adapted by these British minds.
The first thing is the date of creation, 1941, which makes this tale and the opera coming afterwards an essential means to build the pride of Americans and their conviction they have to enter the war to defend the American Way with their Acts, which are the concluding words from Paul Bunyan:
“Where the night becomes the day,
Where the dreams becomes the fact,
I am the Eternal Guest,
I am Way,
I am Act.”
The American patriotism they try to build is surprising since W.H. Auden states in his introductory remarks, and it is absolutely clear in the opera itself, that America was born from “the stage of colonization of the land and the conquest of nature.” No human beings on that land or in that nature. So from the start of the opera it is clear America is a virginal land only covered with a virginal forest. And the birth comes when a “performer” comes there to perform his act. “What kind of a performer?” the four young trees ask. And the three wild geese answer “A man.” The geese mean one particular man known as Paul Bunyan. But the four young trees play dumb and ask “What is a man?” as if the geese were speaking of a generic and not particular man. And the chorus of the old trees asks the question a second time to make sure we have heard the mistake. The three wild geese then answer a generic answer indeed:
“A man is a form of life
That dreams in order to act
And acts in order to dream
And has a name of his own.”
The four young trees and the chorus of old trees finally understand the geese are speaking of one particular man and they ask “what is this name?” and the three wild geese can give the name of this particular man they have been speaking of all along: “Paul Bunyan.”
It is clear there was no man before the arrival of Paul Bunyan in this territory. No Indians, who are mentioned only once in section 24 out of 27:
“Of fights with Indians, of shooting matches,
Of monster bears and salmon catches.
“Of the whirling whimpus Paul fought and killed,
Of the buttermilk Line that he had to build.”
The Indians are in parallel position at the beginning of the first line of a couplet in this ballad with the whirling whimpus, a Sasquatch which is a word of Halkomelem origin, a language of various First Nations peoples in British Columbia. It is obvious that Indians are in no way First Nations here and that they rank with mythic dangerous monsters coming from the culture of the lumberjacks in the first centuries of English colonization of Northern America as shown here:
“The Whirling Whimpus (Turbinoccissus nebuloides) is a Sasquatch-type creature that was said to be responsible for the many disappearances of lumberjacks in the North American woods, a Sasquatch is an anglicized version of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets, which translates as "wild man."
“The whirling whimpus is said to be a blood-thirsty 7 foot tall gorilla-like animal that easily fools any animal of person possible. When it senses prey coming down a pathway, it hides, usually at the bend of the trail. Then as the victim comes nearer, the Whirling Whimpus begins to spin around on one foot or hoof quickly which renders it practically invisible. As it does this, the wind emits a low droning sound that seems to be coming from the trees above. As the prey looks up, trying to locate the sound, the Whimpus attacks and kills the poor creature mercilessly, making it into molasses or maple syrup!” (http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Whirli... & http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Sasquatch, both accessed August 14, 2016.)
In short “it is a forest full of innocent beasts” as it is said in section 3. In the same way there are no Blacks in this opera on America even when it speaks of Alabama in section 9, or Jews when he speaks of New York in the same section 9. In fact the immigrants are identified as from Sweden, from France, from Germany and from Piccadilly Circus, hence London and England. The cooks are good old Americans though we could have expected some Chinese often used as cooks and laundrymen in ventures like ranching, lumbering, mining, building the railroads, etc. But even the good cook is seen as American, Slim, presented as a high plain drifter, a human character made famous in many western films many years later like High Plain Drifter (1973); My Name is Nobody (1973) or Pale Rider (1984).
This being said, and it is important, the traditional story follows different lines for its development. First of all it is interspersed with love episodes, first Paul Bunyan and his wife Carrie, then their daughter Tiny and the cook Slim. This romantic dimension is evoked with love songs and other sections dedicated to it. Then the story is also turned into a critical vision of human motivations. They are identified as love deception; entanglement in some murder or robbery, hence escaping justice; escaping poverty; and accepting to work for a lumbering camp just because they are hungry, which is the case of Johnny Inkslinger, and note this name is not innocent since he is the accountant of the camp, writing down in ink all operations and their cost in a big ledger.
The opera criticizes the vanity of these human beings, or some of them when Hel Helson, the foreman of the camp, decides, with the support of his men, to challenge Paul Bunyan and have a fight with him that was lost before starting since that’s how the legend goes since Paul Bunyan is a giant, which Hel Helson is not, and the text becomes ironical when it says “Helson is tough but Paul has the brains!” Tough is weak when compared with the strength of a giant who does not need much brain to win. After that defeat the men of the camp pretend they had warned Hel Helson. In other words they are hypocrites, or plain ordinary people who follow the wind. Yet the text is constructive since Paul Bunyan concludes the episode with “In the climax of a fight lost affection comes to light.”
Yet this wishy-washy attitude of simple people had been used before when the lumberjacks incite Inkslinger to speak to Sam Sharkey and Ben Benny, the initial two cooks, the first one of soups and the second one of beans, in order to request a change of diet and regimen and to get more variety in the culinary agenda. The two cooks resign at once and the lumberjacks then turn against Inkslinger and accuse him of having caused the resignation against their advice, which is at least a lie.
This brings up the idea that any group has to be led by one person who has more willpower, more stamina, more charisma and more vision than the others. It might only be strength like with Hel Helson, but it is something that makes them superior to the others.
The final litany in the final section 27 is clear when the three animals, the dog and the two cats, sing three stanzas each one concluded by the chorus.
“From the Pressure Group that says I am the Constitution,
From those who say Patriotism and means Persecution,
From a Tolerance that is really inertia and disillusion:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From entertainment neither true nor beautiful nor witty,
From a homespun humor manufactured in the city,
From a dirty-mindedness of a Watch Committee:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From children brought up to believe in self-expression,
From the theology of plumbers or the medical profession,
From depending on alcohol for self-respect and self-possession:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
The program is vast from the three perversions of the Constitution, Patriotism and Tolerance into negative elements; via the three emerging derailing of entertainment, humor and mindedness by a bureaucratic and misguided Watch Committee; to finally the three illusions of self-expression taught to children, the practical and medical theology of a god of small things, and self-respect or self-possession reduced to dependence on some habit-forming substances. And the answer is the same: a prayer to save the victims of these nine – what a marvelous Christian symbol (the Beast, the apocalypse, the hour of Jesus’ death) – evil elements, both animals and men, meaning all living creatures and we have to think of the extermination of Buffalos and other species just to make a profit with their pelts and hides, or just for fun, the fun of killing a wild beast, just the way Indians had been brought close to a full genocide, not to speak of slavery.
And that’s when Paul Bunyan says “I am Way, I am Act.” There is a lot to do to save this nation and in 1941 the world. In the revival of ,the opera in the 1970s two scenes were cut off and one is very pregnant on this subject of social criticism. It is the colorful section where Shadows, meaning dreams, are describing themselves in the poor existence they have to go through to satisfy the impulses of human beings at night when they are dreaming. Note they are four and such groups of four characters are vastly used in the opera. It could be seen as Christian (the crucifixion) but it is probably better to think it is only a pattern that gives some dynamic structure to the story, four being more balanced and stable than three which is revolving, running and whirling around. The four shadows start this long song together:
“You’ve no idea how dull it is
Just being perfect nullities,
The idols of a democratic nation;
The heroes of the multitude;
Their dreams of female pulchritude:
We’re very very tired of admiration.”
Then follows a long list sung by one or two shadows each enumerating the qualities of this pulchritude meaning beauty of women as shown in these dreams, but that are in fact nothing but the expression of the image of women in films and already on television in 1941, for the few as for TV and in the 1970s for the many if not all as for TV again. It is amazing though that this list includes some obvious elements that are masculine like “the cut of my moustache,” “all athletics” and “the Hercules of underwear.” This makes us waver from sex to gender and play on gender orientation if we apply elements that are not per se feminine or masculine to both men and women like “the whims of fashion,” “in our embraces we select whatever technique seems correct” or “for personal hygiene I’ve a flair.”
We will skip the second stanza to jump to the third and the fourth. The fifth stanza is the repeat of the first.
“The growth of social consciousness
Has failed to make our problems less,
Indeed they grow intenser;
And what with Freud and what with Marx
With bureaucrats and matriarchs
The chances are our little larks
Will not get past the censor.
“You’d hate it if you were employed
To be a sin in celluloid
Or else a saint in plaster;
O little hearts who make a fuss,
What pleasure it would give to us
To give the bird to Oedipus,
The raspberry to Jocasta.”
The direct criticism of Freud and Marx, of bureaucrats and matriarchs (who do they mean in 1941, though in the 1970s it was clearly targeting women’s lib activists), then the rejection of the cinema and its celluloid sins, or of religion and its plaster saints is treating these two activities the same, as maybe cathartic illusions though the deeper and deepest desire of the author is to give the middle finger to the Oedipus complex of Freudian men and the noisy fat kiss to the Jocasta complex of the Freudian women.
Why they took off this section is surprising because in the 1970s it would have been a lot more meaningful than in 1941 since Freud was Austrian and had escaped Hitler miraculously, and Marx was German for sure but was the star of the Communist Russians, or Soviets if your prefer. In the 1970s it was common to consider Oedipus and Jocasta complexes as very schematic not to say primitive and anyway purely European and from the West as opposed to the Rest. As for Marx after 1968 which was the culminating peak of Marxism in the world, the decline started, in Prague first as soon as 1968 and then all over the world and still going on today. Marxism has become obsolete in political terms though it is still quite pregnant as an economic and social methodology, provided nothing is reduced to antagonistic couples, and here I reject both antagonism which at least rare if not inexistent in reality, and couples that are the plague of binary methods or visions that have to reduce any complex situation to two elements and no more.
The libretto ends with a Christmas party – and not a Thanksgiving party – that enables the author to give the future of the various characters. One has become a rancher. The cook Slim and his wife Tiny have just been hired as the managers of a Manhattan hotel close to Grand Central Station. Inkslinger was recruited first as a project manager in Washington DC in hydraulic electricity and then as an expert for a full cinema covering of this lumbering epic by the cinema studios in Hollywood. Lumbering has come to an end as an adventure and is now a simple industry and the various lumberjacks have found some future in society, some positions in the economy. The USA have become a developed society in which wild adventures are no longer possible.
To conclude on this libretto, I must say the opera has to be studied musically now. But I must also say that the style of the language used by W.H. Auden is very strong and powerful, strong even at times heady in the music it contains and powerful even at times mesmerizing in the dynamic it suggests. It is Auden at his best, even if today poets seem to look for a language that contains a disrupted syntax to work more on the paradigmatic semantics of words than on their syntagmatic architecture.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The first thing is the date of creation, 1941, which makes this tale and the opera coming afterwards an essential means to build the pride of Americans and their conviction they have to enter the war to defend the American Way with their Acts, which are the concluding words from Paul Bunyan:
“Where the night becomes the day,
Where the dreams becomes the fact,
I am the Eternal Guest,
I am Way,
I am Act.”
The American patriotism they try to build is surprising since W.H. Auden states in his introductory remarks, and it is absolutely clear in the opera itself, that America was born from “the stage of colonization of the land and the conquest of nature.” No human beings on that land or in that nature. So from the start of the opera it is clear America is a virginal land only covered with a virginal forest. And the birth comes when a “performer” comes there to perform his act. “What kind of a performer?” the four young trees ask. And the three wild geese answer “A man.” The geese mean one particular man known as Paul Bunyan. But the four young trees play dumb and ask “What is a man?” as if the geese were speaking of a generic and not particular man. And the chorus of the old trees asks the question a second time to make sure we have heard the mistake. The three wild geese then answer a generic answer indeed:
“A man is a form of life
That dreams in order to act
And acts in order to dream
And has a name of his own.”
The four young trees and the chorus of old trees finally understand the geese are speaking of one particular man and they ask “what is this name?” and the three wild geese can give the name of this particular man they have been speaking of all along: “Paul Bunyan.”
It is clear there was no man before the arrival of Paul Bunyan in this territory. No Indians, who are mentioned only once in section 24 out of 27:
“Of fights with Indians, of shooting matches,
Of monster bears and salmon catches.
“Of the whirling whimpus Paul fought and killed,
Of the buttermilk Line that he had to build.”
The Indians are in parallel position at the beginning of the first line of a couplet in this ballad with the whirling whimpus, a Sasquatch which is a word of Halkomelem origin, a language of various First Nations peoples in British Columbia. It is obvious that Indians are in no way First Nations here and that they rank with mythic dangerous monsters coming from the culture of the lumberjacks in the first centuries of English colonization of Northern America as shown here:
“The Whirling Whimpus (Turbinoccissus nebuloides) is a Sasquatch-type creature that was said to be responsible for the many disappearances of lumberjacks in the North American woods, a Sasquatch is an anglicized version of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets, which translates as "wild man."
“The whirling whimpus is said to be a blood-thirsty 7 foot tall gorilla-like animal that easily fools any animal of person possible. When it senses prey coming down a pathway, it hides, usually at the bend of the trail. Then as the victim comes nearer, the Whirling Whimpus begins to spin around on one foot or hoof quickly which renders it practically invisible. As it does this, the wind emits a low droning sound that seems to be coming from the trees above. As the prey looks up, trying to locate the sound, the Whimpus attacks and kills the poor creature mercilessly, making it into molasses or maple syrup!” (http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Whirli... & http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Sasquatch, both accessed August 14, 2016.)
In short “it is a forest full of innocent beasts” as it is said in section 3. In the same way there are no Blacks in this opera on America even when it speaks of Alabama in section 9, or Jews when he speaks of New York in the same section 9. In fact the immigrants are identified as from Sweden, from France, from Germany and from Piccadilly Circus, hence London and England. The cooks are good old Americans though we could have expected some Chinese often used as cooks and laundrymen in ventures like ranching, lumbering, mining, building the railroads, etc. But even the good cook is seen as American, Slim, presented as a high plain drifter, a human character made famous in many western films many years later like High Plain Drifter (1973); My Name is Nobody (1973) or Pale Rider (1984).
This being said, and it is important, the traditional story follows different lines for its development. First of all it is interspersed with love episodes, first Paul Bunyan and his wife Carrie, then their daughter Tiny and the cook Slim. This romantic dimension is evoked with love songs and other sections dedicated to it. Then the story is also turned into a critical vision of human motivations. They are identified as love deception; entanglement in some murder or robbery, hence escaping justice; escaping poverty; and accepting to work for a lumbering camp just because they are hungry, which is the case of Johnny Inkslinger, and note this name is not innocent since he is the accountant of the camp, writing down in ink all operations and their cost in a big ledger.
The opera criticizes the vanity of these human beings, or some of them when Hel Helson, the foreman of the camp, decides, with the support of his men, to challenge Paul Bunyan and have a fight with him that was lost before starting since that’s how the legend goes since Paul Bunyan is a giant, which Hel Helson is not, and the text becomes ironical when it says “Helson is tough but Paul has the brains!” Tough is weak when compared with the strength of a giant who does not need much brain to win. After that defeat the men of the camp pretend they had warned Hel Helson. In other words they are hypocrites, or plain ordinary people who follow the wind. Yet the text is constructive since Paul Bunyan concludes the episode with “In the climax of a fight lost affection comes to light.”
Yet this wishy-washy attitude of simple people had been used before when the lumberjacks incite Inkslinger to speak to Sam Sharkey and Ben Benny, the initial two cooks, the first one of soups and the second one of beans, in order to request a change of diet and regimen and to get more variety in the culinary agenda. The two cooks resign at once and the lumberjacks then turn against Inkslinger and accuse him of having caused the resignation against their advice, which is at least a lie.
This brings up the idea that any group has to be led by one person who has more willpower, more stamina, more charisma and more vision than the others. It might only be strength like with Hel Helson, but it is something that makes them superior to the others.
The final litany in the final section 27 is clear when the three animals, the dog and the two cats, sing three stanzas each one concluded by the chorus.
“From the Pressure Group that says I am the Constitution,
From those who say Patriotism and means Persecution,
From a Tolerance that is really inertia and disillusion:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From entertainment neither true nor beautiful nor witty,
From a homespun humor manufactured in the city,
From a dirty-mindedness of a Watch Committee:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From children brought up to believe in self-expression,
From the theology of plumbers or the medical profession,
From depending on alcohol for self-respect and self-possession:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
The program is vast from the three perversions of the Constitution, Patriotism and Tolerance into negative elements; via the three emerging derailing of entertainment, humor and mindedness by a bureaucratic and misguided Watch Committee; to finally the three illusions of self-expression taught to children, the practical and medical theology of a god of small things, and self-respect or self-possession reduced to dependence on some habit-forming substances. And the answer is the same: a prayer to save the victims of these nine – what a marvelous Christian symbol (the Beast, the apocalypse, the hour of Jesus’ death) – evil elements, both animals and men, meaning all living creatures and we have to think of the extermination of Buffalos and other species just to make a profit with their pelts and hides, or just for fun, the fun of killing a wild beast, just the way Indians had been brought close to a full genocide, not to speak of slavery.
And that’s when Paul Bunyan says “I am Way, I am Act.” There is a lot to do to save this nation and in 1941 the world. In the revival of ,the opera in the 1970s two scenes were cut off and one is very pregnant on this subject of social criticism. It is the colorful section where Shadows, meaning dreams, are describing themselves in the poor existence they have to go through to satisfy the impulses of human beings at night when they are dreaming. Note they are four and such groups of four characters are vastly used in the opera. It could be seen as Christian (the crucifixion) but it is probably better to think it is only a pattern that gives some dynamic structure to the story, four being more balanced and stable than three which is revolving, running and whirling around. The four shadows start this long song together:
“You’ve no idea how dull it is
Just being perfect nullities,
The idols of a democratic nation;
The heroes of the multitude;
Their dreams of female pulchritude:
We’re very very tired of admiration.”
Then follows a long list sung by one or two shadows each enumerating the qualities of this pulchritude meaning beauty of women as shown in these dreams, but that are in fact nothing but the expression of the image of women in films and already on television in 1941, for the few as for TV and in the 1970s for the many if not all as for TV again. It is amazing though that this list includes some obvious elements that are masculine like “the cut of my moustache,” “all athletics” and “the Hercules of underwear.” This makes us waver from sex to gender and play on gender orientation if we apply elements that are not per se feminine or masculine to both men and women like “the whims of fashion,” “in our embraces we select whatever technique seems correct” or “for personal hygiene I’ve a flair.”
We will skip the second stanza to jump to the third and the fourth. The fifth stanza is the repeat of the first.
“The growth of social consciousness
Has failed to make our problems less,
Indeed they grow intenser;
And what with Freud and what with Marx
With bureaucrats and matriarchs
The chances are our little larks
Will not get past the censor.
“You’d hate it if you were employed
To be a sin in celluloid
Or else a saint in plaster;
O little hearts who make a fuss,
What pleasure it would give to us
To give the bird to Oedipus,
The raspberry to Jocasta.”
The direct criticism of Freud and Marx, of bureaucrats and matriarchs (who do they mean in 1941, though in the 1970s it was clearly targeting women’s lib activists), then the rejection of the cinema and its celluloid sins, or of religion and its plaster saints is treating these two activities the same, as maybe cathartic illusions though the deeper and deepest desire of the author is to give the middle finger to the Oedipus complex of Freudian men and the noisy fat kiss to the Jocasta complex of the Freudian women.
Why they took off this section is surprising because in the 1970s it would have been a lot more meaningful than in 1941 since Freud was Austrian and had escaped Hitler miraculously, and Marx was German for sure but was the star of the Communist Russians, or Soviets if your prefer. In the 1970s it was common to consider Oedipus and Jocasta complexes as very schematic not to say primitive and anyway purely European and from the West as opposed to the Rest. As for Marx after 1968 which was the culminating peak of Marxism in the world, the decline started, in Prague first as soon as 1968 and then all over the world and still going on today. Marxism has become obsolete in political terms though it is still quite pregnant as an economic and social methodology, provided nothing is reduced to antagonistic couples, and here I reject both antagonism which at least rare if not inexistent in reality, and couples that are the plague of binary methods or visions that have to reduce any complex situation to two elements and no more.
The libretto ends with a Christmas party – and not a Thanksgiving party – that enables the author to give the future of the various characters. One has become a rancher. The cook Slim and his wife Tiny have just been hired as the managers of a Manhattan hotel close to Grand Central Station. Inkslinger was recruited first as a project manager in Washington DC in hydraulic electricity and then as an expert for a full cinema covering of this lumbering epic by the cinema studios in Hollywood. Lumbering has come to an end as an adventure and is now a simple industry and the various lumberjacks have found some future in society, some positions in the economy. The USA have become a developed society in which wild adventures are no longer possible.
To conclude on this libretto, I must say the opera has to be studied musically now. But I must also say that the style of the language used by W.H. Auden is very strong and powerful, strong even at times heady in the music it contains and powerful even at times mesmerizing in the dynamic it suggests. It is Auden at his best, even if today poets seem to look for a language that contains a disrupted syntax to work more on the paradigmatic semantics of words than on their syntagmatic architecture.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
August 14, 2016
For his first opera, the extremely British composer chose another extremely British poet to be his librettist and a legendary American folkloric tale to evoke the birth and development of the United States from a sheer empty wilderness only containing wild beasts. There is a lot to say about this version of this campfire tale, a favorite of all YMCA summer camps, adapted by these British minds.
The first thing is the date of creation, 1941, which makes this tale and the opera coming afterwards an essential means to build the pride of Americans and their conviction they have to enter the war to defend the American Way with their Acts, which are the concluding words from Paul Bunyan:
“Where the night becomes the day,
Where the dreams becomes the fact,
I am the Eternal Guest,
I am Way,
I am Act.”
The American patriotism they try to build is surprising since W.H. Auden states in his introductory remarks, and it is absolutely clear in the opera itself, that America was born from “the stage of colonization of the land and the conquest of nature.” No human beings on that land or in that nature. So from the start of the opera it is clear America is a virginal land only covered with a virginal forest. And the birth comes when a “performer” comes there to perform his act. “What kind of a performer?” the four young trees ask. And the three wild geese answer “A man.” The geese mean one particular man known as Paul Bunyan. But the four young trees play dumb and ask “What is a man?” as if the geese were speaking of a generic and not particular man. And the chorus of the old trees asks the question a second time to make sure we have heard the mistake. The three wild geese then answer a generic answer indeed:
“A man is a form of life
That dreams in order to act
And acts in order to dream
And has a name of his own.”
The four young trees and the chorus of old trees finally understand the geese are speaking of one particular man and they ask “what is this name?” and the three wild geese can give the name of this particular man they have been speaking of all along: “Paul Bunyan.”
It is clear there was no man before the arrival of Paul Bunyan in this territory. No Indians, who are mentioned only once in section 24 out of 27:
“Of fights with Indians, of shooting matches,
Of monster bears and salmon catches.
“Of the whirling whimpus Paul fought and killed,
Of the buttermilk Line that he had to build.”
The Indians are in parallel position at the beginning of the first line of a couplet in this ballad with the whirling whimpus, a Sasquatch which is a word of Halkomelem origin, a language of various First Nations peoples in British Columbia. It is obvious that Indians are in no way First Nations here and that they rank with mythic dangerous monsters coming from the culture of the lumberjacks in the first centuries of English colonization of Northern America as shown here:
“The Whirling Whimpus (Turbinoccissus nebuloides) is a Sasquatch-type creature that was said to be responsible for the many disappearances of lumberjacks in the North American woods, a Sasquatch is an anglicized version of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets, which translates as "wild man."
“The whirling whimpus is said to be a blood-thirsty 7 foot tall gorilla-like animal that easily fools any animal of person possible. When it senses prey coming down a pathway, it hides, usually at the bend of the trail. Then as the victim comes nearer, the Whirling Whimpus begins to spin around on one foot or hoof quickly which renders it practically invisible. As it does this, the wind emits a low droning sound that seems to be coming from the trees above. As the prey looks up, trying to locate the sound, the Whimpus attacks and kills the poor creature mercilessly, making it into molasses or maple syrup!” (http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Whirli... & http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Sasquatch, both accessed August 14, 2016.)
In short “it is a forest full of innocent beasts” as it is said in section 3. In the same way there are no Blacks in this opera on America even when it speaks of Alabama in section 9, or Jews when he speaks of New York in the same section 9. In fact the immigrants are identified as from Sweden, from France, from Germany and from Piccadilly Circus, hence London and England. The cooks are good old Americans though we could have expected some Chinese often used as cooks and laundrymen in ventures like ranching, lumbering, mining, building the railroads, etc. But even the good cook is seen as American, Slim, presented as a high plain drifter, a human character made famous in many western films many years later like High Plain Drifter (1973); My Name is Nobody (1973) or Pale Rider (1984).
This being said, and it is important, the traditional story follows different lines for its development. First of all it is interspersed with love episodes, first Paul Bunyan and his wife Carrie, then their daughter Tiny and the cook Slim. This romantic dimension is evoked with love songs and other sections dedicated to it. Then the story is also turned into a critical vision of human motivations. They are identified as love deception; entanglement in some murder or robbery, hence escaping justice; escaping poverty; and accepting to work for a lumbering camp just because they are hungry, which is the case of Johnny Inkslinger, and note this name is not innocent since he is the accountant of the camp, writing down in ink all operations and their cost in a big ledger.
The opera criticizes the vanity of these human beings, or some of them when Hel Helson, the foreman of the camp, decides, with the support of his men, to challenge Paul Bunyan and have a fight with him that was lost before starting since that’s how the legend goes since Paul Bunyan is a giant, which Hel Helson is not, and the text becomes ironical when it says “Helson is tough but Paul has the brains!” Tough is weak when compared with the strength of a giant who does not need much brain to win. After that defeat the men of the camp pretend they had warned Hel Helson. In other words they are hypocrites, or plain ordinary people who follow the wind. Yet the text is constructive since Paul Bunyan concludes the episode with “In the climax of a fight lost affection comes to light.”
Yet this wishy-washy attitude of simple people had been used before when the lumberjacks incite Inkslinger to speak to Sam Sharkey and Ben Benny, the initial two cooks, the first one of soups and the second one of beans, in order to request a change of diet and regimen and to get more variety in the culinary agenda. The two cooks resign at once and the lumberjacks then turn against Inkslinger and accuse him of having caused the resignation against their advice, which is at least a lie.
This brings up the idea that any group has to be led by one person who has more willpower, more stamina, more charisma and more vision than the others. It might only be strength like with Hel Helson, but it is something that makes them superior to the others.
The final litany in the final section 27 is clear when the three animals, the dog and the two cats, sing three stanzas each one concluded by the chorus.
“From the Pressure Group that says I am the Constitution,
From those who say Patriotism and means Persecution,
From a Tolerance that is really inertia and disillusion:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From entertainment neither true nor beautiful nor witty,
From a homespun humor manufactured in the city,
From a dirty-mindedness of a Watch Committee:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From children brought up to believe in self-expression,
From the theology of plumbers or the medical profession,
From depending on alcohol for self-respect and self-possession:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
The program is vast from the three perversions of the Constitution, Patriotism and Tolerance into negative elements; via the three emerging derailing of entertainment, humor and mindedness by a bureaucratic and misguided Watch Committee; to finally the three illusions of self-expression taught to children, the practical and medical theology of a god of small things, and self-respect or self-possession reduced to dependence on some habit-forming substances. And the answer is the same: a prayer to save the victims of these nine – what a marvelous Christian symbol (the Beast, the apocalypse, the hour of Jesus’ death) – evil elements, both animals and men, meaning all living creatures and we have to think of the extermination of Buffalos and other species just to make a profit with their pelts and hides, or just for fun, the fun of killing a wild beast, just the way Indians had been brought close to a full genocide, not to speak of slavery.
And that’s when Paul Bunyan says “I am Way, I am Act.” There is a lot to do to save this nation and in 1941 the world. In the revival of ,the opera in the 1970s two scenes were cut off and one is very pregnant on this subject of social criticism. It is the colorful section where Shadows, meaning dreams, are describing themselves in the poor existence they have to go through to satisfy the impulses of human beings at night when they are dreaming. Note they are four and such groups of four characters are vastly used in the opera. It could be seen as Christian (the crucifixion) but it is probably better to think it is only a pattern that gives some dynamic structure to the story, four being more balanced and stable than three which is revolving, running and whirling around. The four shadows start this long song together:
“You’ve no idea how dull it is
Just being perfect nullities,
The idols of a democratic nation;
The heroes of the multitude;
Their dreams of female pulchritude:
We’re very very tired of admiration.”
Then follows a long list sung by one or two shadows each enumerating the qualities of this pulchritude meaning beauty of women as shown in these dreams, but that are in fact nothing but the expression of the image of women in films and already on television in 1941, for the few as for TV and in the 1970s for the many if not all as for TV again. It is amazing though that this list includes some obvious elements that are masculine like “the cut of my moustache,” “all athletics” and “the Hercules of underwear.” This makes us waver from sex to gender and play on gender orientation if we apply elements that are not per se feminine or masculine to both men and women like “the whims of fashion,” “in our embraces we select whatever technique seems correct” or “for personal hygiene I’ve a flair.”
We will skip the second stanza to jump to the third and the fourth. The fifth stanza is the repeat of the first.
“The growth of social consciousness
Has failed to make our problems less,
Indeed they grow intenser;
And what with Freud and what with Marx
With bureaucrats and matriarchs
The chances are our little larks
Will not get past the censor.
“You’d hate it if you were employed
To be a sin in celluloid
Or else a saint in plaster;
O little hearts who make a fuss,
What pleasure it would give to us
To give the bird to Oedipus,
The raspberry to Jocasta.”
The direct criticism of Freud and Marx, of bureaucrats and matriarchs (who do they mean in 1941, though in the 1970s it was clearly targeting women’s lib activists), then the rejection of the cinema and its celluloid sins, or of religion and its plaster saints is treating these two activities the same, as maybe cathartic illusions though the deeper and deepest desire of the author is to give the middle finger to the Oedipus complex of Freudian men and the noisy fat kiss to the Jocasta complex of the Freudian women.
Why they took off this section is surprising because in the 1970s it would have been a lot more meaningful than in 1941 since Freud was Austrian and had escaped Hitler miraculously, and Marx was German for sure but was the star of the Communist Russians, or Soviets if your prefer. In the 1970s it was common to consider Oedipus and Jocasta complexes as very schematic not to say primitive and anyway purely European and from the West as opposed to the Rest. As for Marx after 1968 which was the culminating peak of Marxism in the world, the decline started, in Prague first as soon as 1968 and then all over the world and still going on today. Marxism has become obsolete in political terms though it is still quite pregnant as an economic and social methodology, provided nothing is reduced to antagonistic couples, and here I reject both antagonism which at least rare if not inexistent in reality, and couples that are the plague of binary methods or visions that have to reduce any complex situation to two elements and no more.
The libretto ends with a Christmas party – and not a Thanksgiving party – that enables the author to give the future of the various characters. One has become a rancher. The cook Slim and his wife Tiny have just been hired as the managers of a Manhattan hotel close to Grand Central Station. Inkslinger was recruited first as a project manager in Washington DC in hydraulic electricity and then as an expert for a full cinema covering of this lumbering epic by the cinema studios in Hollywood. Lumbering has come to an end as an adventure and is now a simple industry and the various lumberjacks have found some future in society, some positions in the economy. The USA have become a developed society in which wild adventures are no longer possible.
To conclude on this libretto, I must say the opera has to be studied musically now. But I must also say that the style of the language used by W.H. Auden is very strong and powerful, strong even at times heady in the music it contains and powerful even at times mesmerizing in the dynamic it suggests. It is Auden at his best, even if today poets seem to look for a language that contains a disrupted syntax to work more on the paradigmatic semantics of words than on their syntagmatic architecture.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The first thing is the date of creation, 1941, which makes this tale and the opera coming afterwards an essential means to build the pride of Americans and their conviction they have to enter the war to defend the American Way with their Acts, which are the concluding words from Paul Bunyan:
“Where the night becomes the day,
Where the dreams becomes the fact,
I am the Eternal Guest,
I am Way,
I am Act.”
The American patriotism they try to build is surprising since W.H. Auden states in his introductory remarks, and it is absolutely clear in the opera itself, that America was born from “the stage of colonization of the land and the conquest of nature.” No human beings on that land or in that nature. So from the start of the opera it is clear America is a virginal land only covered with a virginal forest. And the birth comes when a “performer” comes there to perform his act. “What kind of a performer?” the four young trees ask. And the three wild geese answer “A man.” The geese mean one particular man known as Paul Bunyan. But the four young trees play dumb and ask “What is a man?” as if the geese were speaking of a generic and not particular man. And the chorus of the old trees asks the question a second time to make sure we have heard the mistake. The three wild geese then answer a generic answer indeed:
“A man is a form of life
That dreams in order to act
And acts in order to dream
And has a name of his own.”
The four young trees and the chorus of old trees finally understand the geese are speaking of one particular man and they ask “what is this name?” and the three wild geese can give the name of this particular man they have been speaking of all along: “Paul Bunyan.”
It is clear there was no man before the arrival of Paul Bunyan in this territory. No Indians, who are mentioned only once in section 24 out of 27:
“Of fights with Indians, of shooting matches,
Of monster bears and salmon catches.
“Of the whirling whimpus Paul fought and killed,
Of the buttermilk Line that he had to build.”
The Indians are in parallel position at the beginning of the first line of a couplet in this ballad with the whirling whimpus, a Sasquatch which is a word of Halkomelem origin, a language of various First Nations peoples in British Columbia. It is obvious that Indians are in no way First Nations here and that they rank with mythic dangerous monsters coming from the culture of the lumberjacks in the first centuries of English colonization of Northern America as shown here:
“The Whirling Whimpus (Turbinoccissus nebuloides) is a Sasquatch-type creature that was said to be responsible for the many disappearances of lumberjacks in the North American woods, a Sasquatch is an anglicized version of the Halkomelem word sásq'ets, which translates as "wild man."
“The whirling whimpus is said to be a blood-thirsty 7 foot tall gorilla-like animal that easily fools any animal of person possible. When it senses prey coming down a pathway, it hides, usually at the bend of the trail. Then as the victim comes nearer, the Whirling Whimpus begins to spin around on one foot or hoof quickly which renders it practically invisible. As it does this, the wind emits a low droning sound that seems to be coming from the trees above. As the prey looks up, trying to locate the sound, the Whimpus attacks and kills the poor creature mercilessly, making it into molasses or maple syrup!” (http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Whirli... & http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Sasquatch, both accessed August 14, 2016.)
In short “it is a forest full of innocent beasts” as it is said in section 3. In the same way there are no Blacks in this opera on America even when it speaks of Alabama in section 9, or Jews when he speaks of New York in the same section 9. In fact the immigrants are identified as from Sweden, from France, from Germany and from Piccadilly Circus, hence London and England. The cooks are good old Americans though we could have expected some Chinese often used as cooks and laundrymen in ventures like ranching, lumbering, mining, building the railroads, etc. But even the good cook is seen as American, Slim, presented as a high plain drifter, a human character made famous in many western films many years later like High Plain Drifter (1973); My Name is Nobody (1973) or Pale Rider (1984).
This being said, and it is important, the traditional story follows different lines for its development. First of all it is interspersed with love episodes, first Paul Bunyan and his wife Carrie, then their daughter Tiny and the cook Slim. This romantic dimension is evoked with love songs and other sections dedicated to it. Then the story is also turned into a critical vision of human motivations. They are identified as love deception; entanglement in some murder or robbery, hence escaping justice; escaping poverty; and accepting to work for a lumbering camp just because they are hungry, which is the case of Johnny Inkslinger, and note this name is not innocent since he is the accountant of the camp, writing down in ink all operations and their cost in a big ledger.
The opera criticizes the vanity of these human beings, or some of them when Hel Helson, the foreman of the camp, decides, with the support of his men, to challenge Paul Bunyan and have a fight with him that was lost before starting since that’s how the legend goes since Paul Bunyan is a giant, which Hel Helson is not, and the text becomes ironical when it says “Helson is tough but Paul has the brains!” Tough is weak when compared with the strength of a giant who does not need much brain to win. After that defeat the men of the camp pretend they had warned Hel Helson. In other words they are hypocrites, or plain ordinary people who follow the wind. Yet the text is constructive since Paul Bunyan concludes the episode with “In the climax of a fight lost affection comes to light.”
Yet this wishy-washy attitude of simple people had been used before when the lumberjacks incite Inkslinger to speak to Sam Sharkey and Ben Benny, the initial two cooks, the first one of soups and the second one of beans, in order to request a change of diet and regimen and to get more variety in the culinary agenda. The two cooks resign at once and the lumberjacks then turn against Inkslinger and accuse him of having caused the resignation against their advice, which is at least a lie.
This brings up the idea that any group has to be led by one person who has more willpower, more stamina, more charisma and more vision than the others. It might only be strength like with Hel Helson, but it is something that makes them superior to the others.
The final litany in the final section 27 is clear when the three animals, the dog and the two cats, sing three stanzas each one concluded by the chorus.
“From the Pressure Group that says I am the Constitution,
From those who say Patriotism and means Persecution,
From a Tolerance that is really inertia and disillusion:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From entertainment neither true nor beautiful nor witty,
From a homespun humor manufactured in the city,
From a dirty-mindedness of a Watch Committee:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
“From children brought up to believe in self-expression,
From the theology of plumbers or the medical profession,
From depending on alcohol for self-respect and self-possession:
CHORUS: Save animals and men.”
The program is vast from the three perversions of the Constitution, Patriotism and Tolerance into negative elements; via the three emerging derailing of entertainment, humor and mindedness by a bureaucratic and misguided Watch Committee; to finally the three illusions of self-expression taught to children, the practical and medical theology of a god of small things, and self-respect or self-possession reduced to dependence on some habit-forming substances. And the answer is the same: a prayer to save the victims of these nine – what a marvelous Christian symbol (the Beast, the apocalypse, the hour of Jesus’ death) – evil elements, both animals and men, meaning all living creatures and we have to think of the extermination of Buffalos and other species just to make a profit with their pelts and hides, or just for fun, the fun of killing a wild beast, just the way Indians had been brought close to a full genocide, not to speak of slavery.
And that’s when Paul Bunyan says “I am Way, I am Act.” There is a lot to do to save this nation and in 1941 the world. In the revival of ,the opera in the 1970s two scenes were cut off and one is very pregnant on this subject of social criticism. It is the colorful section where Shadows, meaning dreams, are describing themselves in the poor existence they have to go through to satisfy the impulses of human beings at night when they are dreaming. Note they are four and such groups of four characters are vastly used in the opera. It could be seen as Christian (the crucifixion) but it is probably better to think it is only a pattern that gives some dynamic structure to the story, four being more balanced and stable than three which is revolving, running and whirling around. The four shadows start this long song together:
“You’ve no idea how dull it is
Just being perfect nullities,
The idols of a democratic nation;
The heroes of the multitude;
Their dreams of female pulchritude:
We’re very very tired of admiration.”
Then follows a long list sung by one or two shadows each enumerating the qualities of this pulchritude meaning beauty of women as shown in these dreams, but that are in fact nothing but the expression of the image of women in films and already on television in 1941, for the few as for TV and in the 1970s for the many if not all as for TV again. It is amazing though that this list includes some obvious elements that are masculine like “the cut of my moustache,” “all athletics” and “the Hercules of underwear.” This makes us waver from sex to gender and play on gender orientation if we apply elements that are not per se feminine or masculine to both men and women like “the whims of fashion,” “in our embraces we select whatever technique seems correct” or “for personal hygiene I’ve a flair.”
We will skip the second stanza to jump to the third and the fourth. The fifth stanza is the repeat of the first.
“The growth of social consciousness
Has failed to make our problems less,
Indeed they grow intenser;
And what with Freud and what with Marx
With bureaucrats and matriarchs
The chances are our little larks
Will not get past the censor.
“You’d hate it if you were employed
To be a sin in celluloid
Or else a saint in plaster;
O little hearts who make a fuss,
What pleasure it would give to us
To give the bird to Oedipus,
The raspberry to Jocasta.”
The direct criticism of Freud and Marx, of bureaucrats and matriarchs (who do they mean in 1941, though in the 1970s it was clearly targeting women’s lib activists), then the rejection of the cinema and its celluloid sins, or of religion and its plaster saints is treating these two activities the same, as maybe cathartic illusions though the deeper and deepest desire of the author is to give the middle finger to the Oedipus complex of Freudian men and the noisy fat kiss to the Jocasta complex of the Freudian women.
Why they took off this section is surprising because in the 1970s it would have been a lot more meaningful than in 1941 since Freud was Austrian and had escaped Hitler miraculously, and Marx was German for sure but was the star of the Communist Russians, or Soviets if your prefer. In the 1970s it was common to consider Oedipus and Jocasta complexes as very schematic not to say primitive and anyway purely European and from the West as opposed to the Rest. As for Marx after 1968 which was the culminating peak of Marxism in the world, the decline started, in Prague first as soon as 1968 and then all over the world and still going on today. Marxism has become obsolete in political terms though it is still quite pregnant as an economic and social methodology, provided nothing is reduced to antagonistic couples, and here I reject both antagonism which at least rare if not inexistent in reality, and couples that are the plague of binary methods or visions that have to reduce any complex situation to two elements and no more.
The libretto ends with a Christmas party – and not a Thanksgiving party – that enables the author to give the future of the various characters. One has become a rancher. The cook Slim and his wife Tiny have just been hired as the managers of a Manhattan hotel close to Grand Central Station. Inkslinger was recruited first as a project manager in Washington DC in hydraulic electricity and then as an expert for a full cinema covering of this lumbering epic by the cinema studios in Hollywood. Lumbering has come to an end as an adventure and is now a simple industry and the various lumberjacks have found some future in society, some positions in the economy. The USA have become a developed society in which wild adventures are no longer possible.
To conclude on this libretto, I must say the opera has to be studied musically now. But I must also say that the style of the language used by W.H. Auden is very strong and powerful, strong even at times heady in the music it contains and powerful even at times mesmerizing in the dynamic it suggests. It is Auden at his best, even if today poets seem to look for a language that contains a disrupted syntax to work more on the paradigmatic semantics of words than on their syntagmatic architecture.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
February 22, 2014
Benjamin Britten's first attempt at opera was a commentary on America penned by his friend, W.H. Auden, and premiered at Columbia University, just before the beginning of WW II, when they were both living in New York as conscientious objectors. Auden's approach to the subject is a bit preachy at times, but well worth reading--but the real way to experience these words is by listening to the opera--Britten's emulation of American folk idioms is surprising and charming, and after all, Auden wrote these words to be performed, not merely read.
August 23, 2021
The rating is more for the Donald Mitchell essay that accompanies the libretto rather than for the libretto itself.
November 24, 2021
I remember hearing about this myth as a kid. How hard of a worker he was and how big he was.
October 31, 2020
There is some exquisite material in this, Britten's first opera, from an overstuffed libretto by W.H. Auden. The blues and jazz-inspired content, see especially the Quartet of the Defeated, and Tiny's opening aria, are clearly derivative of American styles, and almost naive by the standards of Britten's later complex operatic writing. But none of these are bad things in the moment.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews