Our American Cousin (opera)
Our American Cousin is an opera in three acts by the American composer Eric Sawyer with libretto by John Shoptaw. The main plot depicts the assassination of Abraham Lincoln from the standpoint of the actors presenting the play of the same name at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. It aims to offer something new in the realm of American contemporary opera, an American myth told in an unfamiliar way, with both poetic and musical language drawing from the past but refracted through the present.
The opera's narrative is the collaborative invention of Shoptaw and Sawyer, freely imagined within the framework of the documented historical event and adapted plot of the original comedy. Its three acts comprise the backstage events prior to the play, the play itself, and the rupture of the stage drama by the assassination and its aftermath.
Read more about Our American Cousin (opera): Performance History, Recording, Roles, Synopsis
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or cousin:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The Empress is Legitimist, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte III (1808–1873)