Centuries in the Hours
A chamber opera in two acts, featuring a narrative of interwoven stories from the diaries of ten women spanning two centuries, 1704-1901
Lisa Bielawa, composer
Claire Solomon, librettist
Seeking producers for premiere production
Lisa Bielawa and Claire Solomon's opera Centuries in the Hours was inspired by two hundred years of women’s diaries Bielawa discovered as a William Randolph Hearst Visiting Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in 2018. As in much of Bielawa’s previous work, Centuries in the Hours lifts women’s lives from obscurity to join the flow of public history. Solomon’s libretto puts these diarists into dialogue, staging a crazy-quilt America as seen from its domestic sphere.
A teen genius in 1901 Montana has words with a housekeeper in 1890's Denver when she claims 19 is the new 40; a woman in Iowa invents a perpetual motion machine in 1885 that turns out to be a horse, and a Colonial woman rides it from Boston to New Haven in 1704. A 19th-century amateur astrologer creates a Calendar of Fatigue, and a Revolutionary-era teen invites us to generalize about men. The Ghost of Eliza Jumel passes through walls and time, linking individual arias for each principal role with duets in which she pits women against each other, reads their private diaries, and obsessively relates whatever they say to her own tale of lost wealth.
Blisteringly ambitious in life, Eliza Jumel’s ghost is invasive and maternal, alternating narcissistic rage with narcissistic twinning. Her moods trigger discord, yet each problem ends up strangely solved through transhistorical cooperation, an unchosen family bending the arc of history out of time, living Centuries in the Hours.
When my Happiness is given me I shall live centuries in the hours.
- Mary MacLane, 19 years old, Butte, Montana, 1901
SETTING: A mansion in upper Manhattan during the early 19th century, with ghostly visitations to other times and places in American history.
PRINCIPAL ROLES:
Ghost of Eliza Jumel - Former owner of the mansion (New York, 1800s) - Mezzo-Soprano
Betsey Stockton - Black missionary (Philadelphia and Hawai'i, 1823) - Mezzo or Contralto
Sallie McNeill - Depressed Southern belle (Texas, 1861) - Mezzo
Mary MacLane - Poetic teen genius (Butte, Montana, 1901) - Coloratura Soprano
Emily French - Divorced, harried housekeeper (Denver, 1890) – Lyric Soprano
Sarah Wister - Teenager evacuated during the Revolutionary War (Philadelphia, 1778) - Soprano
SECONDARY ROLES*:
Caroline Barrett White - White abolitionist (New England, 1860's) - Soprano
Emily Hawley Gillespie - Matriarch who dreams of inventions (Iowa, 1885) - Lyric Soprano
Sarah Kimball Knight - Widow who travels on horseback alone (Boston, 1704) - Contralto
Charlotte Forten Grimké - Black abolitionist (Philadelphia, 19th century) - Soprano
Maria Mitchell Housewife (Nantucket, 1886) – Mezzo
*can be double cast with singers on principal roles
PROPOSED ORCHESTRATION: 2(+Pic)22(+BCl)1/2200/Perc/Hp/Pf(ToyPf)/Str
Composer Lisa Bielawa is a Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and takes inspiration for her work from literary sources and close artistic collaborations. Her music has been premiered at the NY PHIL BIENNIAL, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, SHIFT Festival, National Cathedral, Rouen Opera, MAXXI Museum in Rome, and Helsinki Music Center, and more.
Claire Solomon is associate professor of Hispanic Studies and comparative literature at Oberlin College. She is the author of a book about literary prostitutes and short fiction and essays about avant-garde theater, anarcho-feminism, Manic Pixie Dream Girls, translation theory and music. She is currently at work on a novel about higher education and the librettos for Centuries in the Hours and La Ballonniste.
Centuries in the Hours is commissioned in part by Kaufman Music Center, underwritten by Cathy White O’Rourke. Development of Centuries in the Hours was funded in part by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. The work is an outgrowth of a song cycle of the same name that was co-commissioned in 2019 by the ASCAP Foundation Charles Kingsford Fund and ROCO (River Oaks Chamber Orchestra).