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Holst’s The Wandering Scholar in New York City

Apr. 26, 2012

Holst’s <em>The Wandering Scholar</em> in New York City

The Little Opera Theatre of New York opens its Spring season with a unique look at the work of Gustav Holst with their program Travelers. Befitting this theme, the program is a double bill of Holst’s one-act chamber operas The Wandering Scholar and Sāvitri; one a charming medieval tale of morality and infidelity, the other a mythic, universal tale of love and death from the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata.

The history of The Wandering Scholar is an interesting one. Composed near the end of the composer’s life, the opera received its premiere in Liverpool in January, 1934 though Holst was too ill to attend the premiere. While markings in the composer’s manuscript indicate his intention to revise the score (“more harmony? tempo?”) Holst was unable to complete any further revisions before his death in May, 1934. The music to this one-act opera would eventually find its way into the hands of Benjamin Britten, who prepared the chamber orchestra version first used at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1951. In 1968, Britten and Imogen Holst edited the opera for publication. What resulted is a delightful and economical score matching the little medieval tale’s speed of expression. Gramophone magazine notes that the opera, “wastes no notes and finds a natural manner of musical declamation that anticipates Britten in its mastery of English speech-rhythms.”

Like Savitri, The Wandering Scholar is swift-footed and spare of frame.  Clifford Bax’s libretto is shapely and amusing, and Holst’s pungent music somehow contrives to give it the flavor of a bawdy epigram.

-          Edmund Tracey, The Observer

These melodies retain a certain popular flavor and yet they have real dramatic bite; they are enlivened by vivid turns of phrase, by surprising cross-currents and Holst’s characteristically asymmetrical rhythms to make a witty, compact and attractive work.

-          Robert Henderson, The Musical Times

The performances, conducted by Richard Cordova and directed by Philip Shneidman, commence May 10 at the 59E59 Theatres in Manhattan, with four subsequent performances through May 13.

Learn more on the music of Gustav Holst by visiting www.fabermusic.com.

Details on the production are located at www.lotny.org.

Gustav Holst
The Wandering Scholar (1930)
chamber opera in one act
libretto (En) by Clifford Bax, based on the novel The Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell
edited by Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst
for soprano, tenor, baritone and bass
1.pic.1.ca.2.2-2.0.0.0-str
reduced orchestration: 1(pic).1(ca).1.1-1.0.0.0-perc-hp-str
30’

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