Underworld Productions: Julia 2007

UNDERWORLD PRODUCTIONS presents:
Julia

An operatic monodrama by Henry Papale based on the letters of Julia Ward Howe.

Recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Spaces Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre, New York City.

Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 8 p.m.

Starring Jeannie Im, soprano

Gina Crusco director

Joyce Liao lighting designer

Elizabeth Rodgers - pianist
Matthew Goodman clarinetist
Robert Lawrence violinist
E. Zoe Hassman cellist

George Lamboy, Regal Entertainment videographer
Erik-Peter Mortensen and Boris Berlin Perovic audio engineers
Victoria Collins - editing

****

May 17, 1847

I have not written because
I have been in a studious, meditative,
and most uncommunicative frame of mind,
and have very few words
to throw at many dogs.
It is quite delightful
to take to study again
and to feel
that old and stupid as one may be,
there is still in ones mind
a little power of improvement.
The longer I live, the more I feel
the child-like helplessness
about all practical affairs.
Certainly a creature
with such useless hands
has never been seen.
I seem to need a dry nurse
as much as my children.

Boston has been greatly enlivened
during the past month
by a really fine opera --
the troupe from Havana
(much better than the New York troupe)
with a fine orchestra and chorus, all
Italians.
My children are coming on famously.
Julia is really a fine creature;
full of sensibility and talent,
full of fun,
and so is my sweet Flossie,
my little flaxen haired wax doll.
I play for them on the piano;
Lizzie beats the tambourine
and the two babies take hold of hands
and dance.

Is not your heart fully satisfied
with such a sight?
you will ask me.
I reply, dear Weevie,
that the soul whose desires
are not fixed upon the unattainable
is dead even while it liveth
and that I am glad,
in the midst of all my comforts,
to feel myself still a pilgrim
in pursuit of something
that is neither house, nor lands,
nor children nor health.
What that something is I scarce know.
Sometimes it seems to me one thing
and sometimes another!

Oh, Immortality,
thou art to us
but a painful rapture,
an ecstatic burden
in this earthly life.
God, teach me to bear thee
until thou shalt bear me.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Opera
• ClassicalMusic
• ContemporaryOpera
• Non-Profit
• NewYork
• UnderworldProductions
• JuliaWardHowe
• LiveMusic
• United
• States