Taylor's "Ibbetson"

When Composer Joseph Deems Taylor collaborated with Poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay on the opera The King's Henchman in 1927, their work evoked such acclaim that Composer Taylor was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to do another. First he worked on Heywood Broun's allegorical Candle Follows His Nose, dropped it, set to work on Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning Street Scene. In November 1929, he shelved that, went into seclusion at his home eight miles from Stamford, Conn, for a third start. Last week he emerged, announced that "by the grace of God" he had finished libretto and score for Peter Ibbetson, his second grand opera; that he would not take a vacation until the orchestration was done--a task requiring three more months at least.

Already arrangements are under way for producing Peter Ibbetson at the Metropolitan next season. (''My guess," declared Composer Taylor, "is January or February.") Edward Johnson will create the role of Peter, Lucrezia Bori that of Mimsey. Lawrence Tibbett will have a part, probably the uncle.

Comprising nine scenes in three acts, the libretto "will be a sort of operatic verse, or a sort of loose blank verse, in that the words may be sung." It will not be in the grand style of Wagnerian music-drama. Composer Taylor started work with a Wagner-type opera in mind, but found the German form somehow did not naturally evolve. Was it especially "American?" he was asked. Replied he: "Perhaps some of the rhythm might be deemed so, but that is for the critics. However, I wasn't attempting to make it such."

Peter Ibbetson will have more arias than The King's Henchman and a great deal of choral singing. Two orchestras will be used, one in the pit, and one. during several scenes, on stage. Settings have been designed by famed Joseph Urban.

George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson is the story of two of fiction's fondest dreamers--Mimsey Seraskier and Peter. After an idyllic childhood with Mimsey in Paris, Peter is orphaned, goes to England to live with an uncle whose chief delights are wenching and lying about wenching. Peter leaves the uncle's house when life becomes intolerable, goes to London where he meets the beauteous Duchess of Towers--Mimsey grown up. Before they part "forever" she tells him how to "dream true," how to live in a world of fantasy.

When Peter learns that the uncle has spread lying tales about his parents, he kills the uncle, is tried, convicted, sentenced to death. Later the sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. The long years in prison are made livable by the dreams in which Mimsey visits him. One night she fails to come; Mimsey is dead. Peter goes berserk, attacks a warden, is committed to an insane asylum. Before he dies Mimsey comes to him again in the guise of an old woman. He meets Death happily.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.