Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Eyerly: The House of the Seven Gables

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Thanksgiving is by origin a New England holiday, and my lyric theater offering this Sunday springs directly from the literary culture of our region. Scott Eyerly's three act opera, The House of the Seven Gables (2000), is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's great American novel, first published in 1850. Eyerly wrote his own libretto and the story of the opera follows the book closely. In 1992, Eyerly received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to compose this his first operatic work, which was intended for its premiere production by the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater. As part of his personal preparation for composing, he spent six weeks in Salem, Massachusetts. He was permitted to sleep overnight in one of the bedrooms of the creaky, spooky seventeenth-century wooden structure. The house itself is practically a character in both novel and opera. Albany Records released The House of the Seven Gables on two compact discs in 2001. I last presented it on Sunday, November 28, 2004.