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Post-Madonna Prima Donna is a one-act opera, for which I wrote both the music and the libretto. The subject of the opera is language. This is reflected in the word play of the title, the content of the libretto, the conversational vernacular with which those ideas are discussed in the recitatives, and the “language” of tonality as it develops throughout the opera.
One singer performs both the title role and an interlocutor in dialogue with that character. Like Thespis—who is credited with inventing the art of acting in ancient Greece by performing multiple characters that he distinguished by costume and mask changes—the “aural mask” of a vocoder defines the soprano’s alternate character. And like Greek tragedy the chorus is an additional abstract character.
When I composed this work I was more interested in opera as a form than as drama or spectacle. Consequently, I used the classical operatic forms of overture, recitative, aria and finale. However, I organized those units into a structure of nested palindromes embedded within an overarching palindrome in order to critically reex-amine tradition through rigorous methodology. For example, the accompaniment of recitative 2 reiterates the accompaniment of recitative 1 backwards, while within each recitative every phrase is a palindromic rhythm.
Post-Madonna Prima Donna is dedicated to Deanna Neil. It premiered at The Stone in New York City, July 28, 2006, and was previously performed as a work-in-progress at The World Music Hall in Middletown, CT, April 17, 2001.
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