Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Full-length opera, based on a novella by Kleist, an 18th c. German author, "The Marquise of O". German version: "dass ich eins und doppelt bin": Eine Oper nach Kleists Die Marquise von O...
Performers: Lydia McClain, soprano
Christopher Grundy, baritone
Amelia Nagoski, Conductor
Ensemble of The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Penny Brandt, Director (2018)
Recorded live at Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT)
Short Synopsis:
Set in the late eighteenth century, the story opens with a ‘flash-forward’: townspeople are reading a
statement from a newspaper in which the widowed Marquise of O (Julietta) petitions that the father of her unborn child come and identify himself so that they may marry. The Marquise has found herself inexplicably with child and, out of consideration for her family, has decided to set things to right, even though she goes against strict societal conventions. Julietta and her two children are living with her father, a colonel on the Napoleonic side, mother, and brother. Suddenly war breaks out. Russian troops storm their fort in Lombardy. In the ensuing confusion, a Russian leader of the troops, Count Pjotr/Peter F., rescues the Marquise of O. and her entourage from
being accosted by some of his soldiers. He carries her into a gazebo. As she lies unconscious, the Count weakens, overcome by her beauty, and rapes her himself. The following morning, the Russian general has executed these soldiers, with the Count standing silently aside. He is full of remorse, though, at having taken advantage of Julietta.
The news of the Count’s death on the battlefield has reached the Marquise and her family in their town house in Modena. They are really taken aback, then, as the Count appears at their door, telling of his serious wounds but not of his demise. He urgently asks for the hand of the Marquise in marriage. Advising the Count to continue on with his business trip, the family asks him for time to deliberate; he should return after a period of time. During his absence, Julietta feels uneasy and increasingly unwell, similar to the feelings she had during her previous pregnancy. She shrugs this thought off as impossible. After summoning the doctor and even the midwife, however, her pregnancy is confirmed. She denies the veracity of this statement and almost breaks down under the strain and shock. Because of her condition, she is cast off by her father; her mother also becomes estranged.
Julietta then comes upon the idea (unheard of, at that time) to advertise openly for the father of her unborn child to meet her on a stipulated date. Upon learning of this, the Count goes to the country house where she and her children are living but he is rejected by her. His utter remorse is misinterpreted: he is disconsolate, since he wanted to confess that he was the father of her child. The culmination of the preceding events is reached as mother and daughter await the ‘mystery figure of the father’ to appear. As the Count strides into the room, Julietta waves him away, not realizing that he has come to reveal his identity. The Marquise goes back on her word ‘to marry the father’, responding “like a fury”; her ‘angel-rescuer’ has turned into a devil in her eyes. After the birth of their baby, the Count is able to see his child on special family occasions, having had to part from the Marquise immediately following a pro forma wedding ceremony, urged upon the Marquise by her parents. Recalling an event in his childhood, he pictures Julietta as a shining swan emerging from the water spotlessly unaffected, after he had thrown mud at the creature.
Moving beyond Kleist’s ending, the last scene of our opera finds Julietta and Peter in her garden. Listening to one another, they face the truth in each other’s story. Gradually Julietta finds ‘the love from self set free’. Acknowledging the bad residing right alongside the good, as it does in all of us, she agrees to live out her days with Peter. Their reconciliation symbolizes a ‘third way’, a non-violent resolution to the tragic event, that is not forgotten but also not preventing their life together.
composers.com
Full-length opera, based on a novella by Kleist, an 18th c. German author, "The Marquise of O". German version: "dass ich eins und doppelt bin": Eine Oper nach Kleists Die Marquise von O...
Performers: Lydia McClain, soprano
Christopher Grundy, baritone
Amelia Nagoski, Conductor
Ensemble of The Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Penny Brandt, Director (2018)
Recorded live at Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT)
Short Synopsis:
Set in the late eighteenth century, the story opens with a ‘flash-forward’: townspeople are reading a
statement from a newspaper in which the widowed Marquise of O (Julietta) petitions that the father of her unborn child come and identify himself so that they may marry. The Marquise has found herself inexplicably with child and, out of consideration for her family, has decided to set things to right, even though she goes against strict societal conventions. Julietta and her two children are living with her father, a colonel on the Napoleonic side, mother, and brother. Suddenly war breaks out. Russian troops storm their fort in Lombardy. In the ensuing confusion, a Russian leader of the troops, Count Pjotr/Peter F., rescues the Marquise of O. and her entourage from
being accosted by some of his soldiers. He carries her into a gazebo. As she lies unconscious, the Count weakens, overcome by her beauty, and rapes her himself. The following morning, the Russian general has executed these soldiers, with the Count standing silently aside. He is full of remorse, though, at having taken advantage of Julietta.
The news of the Count’s death on the battlefield has reached the Marquise and her family in their town house in Modena. They are really taken aback, then, as the Count appears at their door, telling of his serious wounds but not of his demise. He urgently asks for the hand of the Marquise in marriage. Advising the Count to continue on with his business trip, the family asks him for time to deliberate; he should return after a period of time. During his absence, Julietta feels uneasy and increasingly unwell, similar to the feelings she had during her previous pregnancy. She shrugs this thought off as impossible. After summoning the doctor and even the midwife, however, her pregnancy is confirmed. She denies the veracity of this statement and almost breaks down under the strain and shock. Because of her condition, she is cast off by her father; her mother also becomes estranged.
Julietta then comes upon the idea (unheard of, at that time) to advertise openly for the father of her unborn child to meet her on a stipulated date. Upon learning of this, the Count goes to the country house where she and her children are living but he is rejected by her. His utter remorse is misinterpreted: he is disconsolate, since he wanted to confess that he was the father of her child. The culmination of the preceding events is reached as mother and daughter await the ‘mystery figure of the father’ to appear. As the Count strides into the room, Julietta waves him away, not realizing that he has come to reveal his identity. The Marquise goes back on her word ‘to marry the father’, responding “like a fury”; her ‘angel-rescuer’ has turned into a devil in her eyes. After the birth of their baby, the Count is able to see his child on special family occasions, having had to part from the Marquise immediately following a pro forma wedding ceremony, urged upon the Marquise by her parents. Recalling an event in his childhood, he pictures Julietta as a shining swan emerging from the water spotlessly unaffected, after he had thrown mud at the creature.
Moving beyond Kleist’s ending, the last scene of our opera finds Julietta and Peter in her garden. Listening to one another, they face the truth in each other’s story. Gradually Julietta finds ‘the love from self set free’. Acknowledging the bad residing right alongside the good, as it does in all of us, she agrees to live out her days with Peter. Their reconciliation symbolizes a ‘third way’, a non-violent resolution to the tragic event, that is not forgotten but also not preventing their life together.
composers.com
