Publisher

Theodore Presser

Year of Composition

1990

Duration

45'

Instrumentation

Soprano and string quartet

Categories

Opera
Vocal Works

Text Writer

James Joyce (from Ulysses)

Audio/Video

Purchase Sheet Music

Score and Parts (Theodore Presser)

Commercial Recordings

Yes (Albany Records)

Commission & Premiere Info

Premiered at the Albany City Arts Building in Albany, NY on March 10, 1991

Press Quotes

"Ms. Bond's work, a setting of the final section of 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