Down by the Greenwood Side (opera)

Harrison Birtwistle

Operas Punch and Judy (1968) Down by the Greenwood Side (1969) The Mask of Orpheus (1986) Yan Tan Tethera (1986) Gawain (1991) The Second Mrs Kong (1994) The Last Supper (2000) The Io Passion (2004) The Minotaur (2008) The Corridor (2009)

Down by the Greenwood Side is a "dramatic pastoral" composed by Harrison Birtwistle to a text by Michael Nyman. It was first performed on 8 May 1969 at the Festival Pavilion, West Pier, Brighton.^[1]

The text comes from two sources: a popular ballad called “The Cruel Mother”, and passages from various mummer plays, the folk plays of the English countryside. The soprano, Mrs. Green, sings the ballad while the actors and mime perform the play. The two ingredients never meet; both are completely self-contained, involved only in themselves. But near the end, in the final tableau, there is a slight acknowledgement of each other’s worlds when the presenter of the mummers’ play, Father Christmas, completes the story Mrs. Green has been telling, and Mrs. Green momentarily enters the mummers’ acting area.^[2]

References

↑ Holden, Amanda; (editor), with Kenyon, Nicholas and Walsh, Stephen (1993). The Viking Opera Guide. London: Viking. pp. 107–8. ISBN 0-670-81292-7. Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)
↑ http://www.universaledition.com/Sir-Harrison-Birtwistle/composers-and-works/composer/64/work/2150/work_introduction

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