Back to ListMOLLY MANYBLOOM (1990) 45'
Theodore Presser; ASCAP
Text: James Joyce, Ulysses
soprano and string quartet
Prem: 3/10/91; Albany City Arts Building, Albany NY
"Ms. Bond's work, a setting of the final section pf Ulysses, grants Molly something that Joyce denied her when he married her off to Bloom: she lets Molly be a prima donna, and gives her a powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding soprano line. Like Joyce's text, it is by turns wistful, angry, caustic, rhapsodic and nostalgic. And around it, Ms Bond has woven an expressive, dynamic quartet score in which the instruments are heard alone, in duets with Molly, and in a promiscuous combination of duets, trios and full ensembles. The language is pervasively chromatic, yet it takes in influences of all sorts, including blues, a waltz and fragments of popular songs mentioned by Joyce." -The New York Times
"Impressive, ambitious and effective." -Harold Prince