Word: kenward
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...copyright problems, another misfire. Deciding that "you can't write opera unless it's you," he hit on Strindberg's play Miss Julie, whose morbid Freudian thickets "fitted me; I am fascinated with death." The Scandinavian setting, too, suited his Norwegian heritage, but he and Librettist Kenward Elmslie figured that the drama might have more impact if transformed into a love tragedy involving a Deep South heiress and her Negro servant. Timely and all that. Off to New Orleans they went to soak up some local color, only to belatedly discover that it "just wouldn...
...this opera, commissioned by the Ford Foundation, Librettist Kenward Elmslie has taken dramatic liberty with both fact and legend. Lizzie (Soprano Brenda Lewis), actually the younger Borden daughter, has become the older one, obsessed by fears of approaching spinsterhood, painfully exposed in a scene in which she tries on her sister's wedding dress. A domineering, miserly father and a self-centered, vindictive stepmother create a stifling, explosive atmosphere in which Lizzie's chilling actions become more plausible...