The Nightingale and the Rose: Chamber Opera in Two Acts

Abstract

I chose Oscar Wilde’s short story, The Nightingale and the Rose (about a nightingale who sacrifices her life to create a red rose for love), for my opera for its fantasy, wit, and expectation-defying tropes. This one-hour chamber opera for piano, chorus, two actors (Aubrey; bicyclist), dancers, and six vocalists (Gayle: soprano; Scarlet, Nita: mezzo sopranos; Alex, Elon: tenors; Oakley: baritone) is a reduction of the projected complete orchestration. Act One includes scenes 1-3 and dance interludes 1-2, and Act Two comprises scenes 1-2 with one dance interlude. In historical artistic works nightingales represent creativity and their songs, laments. I advanced these concepts as author of the libretto, and the symbols fed the musical materials and development. Regarding pitch choices: each interval represents a feeling, realm, or ideology, which build leitmotivs for characters and moods. P1/P8 represent optimism (in leitmotifs: Gayle, yellow, hope, love). M2/m7 and m2/M7 represent the natural world (red rose, Gayle, hope, Oakley, love, sorrow, death). M3/m6 and m3/M6 represent feelings of the heart, intuition, or right brain activity (Scarlet, Gayle, hope, love, sorrow, colors). P4 represents logic and left brain thinking (Alex, philosophy, hope, Gayle). The tritone represents heartbreak and disillusionment (Oakley, Gayle, sorrow, death). P5 represents dull hollowness (Aubrey, sorrow). Regarding other musical elements: Gayle and Nita sing varied, improvisatory-like repetitions, with colorful techniques such as glissandos, trills, and brief drastic descending lines to show the emotive power of laments. I demonstrate Gayle’s care for all by having her sing duets with every character she encounters. The chorus sets the scene as garden night creatures. They support Gayle’s wordless leitmotifs: Gayle, love, sorrow, and death to an intense climax. Repetition, expanding ranges, accelerating accompaniment, and cluster chords build tension. Complete silence after the climax adds to its impact, and the a cappella chorus sings the lament-like death motive in unison, highlighting the poignance of this moment in the drama. Gayle represents creativity, and death is her creative act. To create, creativity must die. However, after the destruction/creation of an idea, there is always another, so I added a wordless musical epilogue to the original story.