San Francisco's Burning: A Ballad Opera

by Helen Adam, Al Carmines (Composer)

Fiction. Audiences throughout the country have heard Helen Adam perform songs from SAN FRANCISCO'S BURNING, a ballad opera both richly comic and darkly mysterious. Now, Hanging Loose Press is pleased to publish the first complete edition of the play, with the full text by Miss Adam and her sister, Pat, the full score by Al Carmines, and drawings by Jess.

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Helen Douglas Adam was a Scottish journalist and author. After moving to London, she worked as a journalist for the Weekly Scotsman. At the outbreak of the Second World War she was stranded in Connecticut, where she had been attending a wedding. She later moved to San Francisco, where she became a muse to the beat generation of the 1950s and 60s.

Her dark, timeless tales of doomed love and emotional revenge are hauntingly crafted into traditional ballad forms. Thanks to publication in magazines and anthologies and personal readings at universities, theatres and poetry centres, she had an enthusiastic following in the USA. Her Selected Poems and Ballads were published in 1974.

Reviews

[birdslibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 hour avant-garde ballad opera I listened to here:
https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x...
Multiple recordings exist though, with their own strengths. I find this the best for being the earliest and most musically robust, drawbacks being the absence of read stage directions leaving the plot hard to follow and some abridgments.

[Wynene · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as opera ballads go, this one burns down the house.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam uses the Scottish ballad form in a clever and surprising play. The characters walk on and off the stage in colorful personas they must have held in the San Francisco Renaissance. Fun read!