A Dickinson Dirge

2007 – for Soprano, Tenor, and Mixed Chamber Ensemble (25:00)

LIBRETTO

Libretto compiled by Michael Schachter from texts by Emily Dickinson


INSTRUMENTATION

Clarinet in Bb, Piano, Violin, Contrabass, Percussion
Soprano, Tenor


NOTE

This is one of the oddities of my student years, but I have a special fondness for it despite its lumps. While I was at Harvard, the Contemporary Music Ensemble regularly staged one-act operas of usually quirky and/or subversive themes. For this project, I Frankenstein’d together a large number of otherwise unconnected Emily Dickinson poems into a sad “love-lost” narrative between a man and a woman.

Emily-Dickinson-Poet


PREMIERE

April 2007
Paine Hall, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Kathy Gerlach, James Onstad, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Contemporary Music Ensemble


Copyright 2013-22 by Michael Schachter. michael.schachter [at] gmail.com