Soper: The Romance of the Rose
This item is made to order and typically ships within 2-3 weeks.
Shipping Policy- Composer: Kate Soper (1981-)
- Instrumentation: Opera
- Work: The Romance of the Rose (2023)
- Binding: Spiral Bound
- Work Language: English
- Size: 8.9 x 12.0 inches
Description
Book and Music by Kate Soper, Inspired by Le Roman de La Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Additional texts by Christina Rosetti, William Shakespeare, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Christine de Pizan
Inspired by the bizarre and audacious 13th-century poem of the same name, "The Romance of the Rose" mixes medieval and contemporary allegory to dramatize the ways in which love, sex, and music wreak havoc on our sense of self. Lulled into a dreamlike state by The Dreamer, the audience follows their modern-day avatar The Lover into a surreal landscape brimming with riddles. On a mission for the conquest of a literal rose, The Lover meets The God of Love, Lady Reason, Shame, and their retinues – but as the fable unfolds, these allegorical figures begin to warp, revealing the fractured state of identity at the core of all human experience. Meanwhile, the music itself freely beguiles, charms, and terrifies with no moral allegiances.
"....to leave the theater dazed by a new opera is one thing. To be still processing where the humor ends and the meaning begins, even after time to reflect, is another much rarer and more valuable thing." (The LA Times)
"Tender, whip-smart .... with earnestness, wit, whimsy, self-awareness and music that ranges freely among Baroque madrigals, power ballads and barbed modernism." (The New York Times)
"Soper mobilizes the entire thousand-year history of music...I came away all the more convinced that she is in a Major music-theatre talent." (The New Yorker)
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Soper: The Romance of the Rose
