''Rosa, A Horse Drama'' also called ''Rosa – The Death of a Composer'' is an

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

in 12 scenes by Dutch composer,

Louis Andriessen Louis Joseph Andriessen (; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although ...

with a libretto by English film maker

Peter Greenaway Peter Greenaway, (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Mannerist painting in particular. Common traits in his films a ...

. The libretto was the sixth in Greenaway's '' Death of a Composer'' series which explores the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, two real (

Anton Webern Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...

and

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's ...

), and the remaining eight fictional. It premiered at the

Dutch National Opera The Dutch National Opera (DNO; formerly De Nederlandse Opera, now De Nationale Opera in Dutch) is a Dutch opera company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its present home base is the Dutch National Opera & Ballet housed in the Stopera building, a m ...

on 2 November 1994 in a production co-directed by Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke. A recording of the opera was released on the Nonesuch label in 1998;

Asko/Schönberg AskoSchönberg is a Dutch music ensemble that specialises in contemporary classical music, especially that of the 21st century. It was formed by a merging of the ''Asko Ensemble'' and the ''Schönberg Ensemble'' in 2009. Asko Ensemble Forme ...

, conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. .

Background

Andriessen had worked previously with Greenaway in 1991 on a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

commission "M is for Man, Music, Mozart". They had discussed the idea of collaborating on a film or opera with Greenaway initially suggesting The Baby of Mâcon which Andriessen rejected. "Rosa" was finally decided upon with Andriessen noting "..it's not about Rosa, but about film, especially westerns, and about parody." The music in Scene 11 contains a homage to film composer,

Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone ( , ; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, Orchestration, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 film score, scores for cinema and televisi ...

Roles

Synopsis

The opera tells the story of Juan Manuel de Rosa, a fictitious

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

who writes

film scores A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

for

Westerns The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated wit ...

, and is murdered in

Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...

. The action is set in a disused

abattoir In livestock agriculture and the meat industry, a slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (), is a facility where livestock animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a meat ...

Fray Bentos Fray Bentos () is the capital city of the Río Negro Department, in south-western Uruguay, at the Argentina-Uruguay border, near the Argentine city of Gualeguaychú. Its port on the Uruguay River is one of the nation's most important harbours. T ...

, Uruguay. Rosa falls in love with his horse while mistreating his fiancée, Esmeralda Boscano, who is constantly writing to her mother about these events. In scene 4 she sings "Dear Mama I am jealous of a horse, is that possible?" In a desperate move to attract Rosa's attention she strips naked and covers herself in black ink in an effort to look like Rosa's horse, a black mare. Meanwhile two horsemen, possibly Esmeralda's brothers, advance on Rosa while he is out riding and shoot him dead. All of the action is staged as a 're-enactment' with the singers playing the part of actors, with frequent changing of roles. Two cowboys read the newspaper reports of the murder which refer to Esmeralda as Rosa's 'wife'. They then perform a marriage of Esmeralda to Rosa's corpse. It transpires that Rosa left a will with one sentence "When I die kill my horse and burn it." The opera concludes with Rosa's naked corpse sat astride his dead horse which has been eviscerated and now has Esmeralda and all of Rosa's money inside it. Everything is then burnt. The opera is scored for 2 sopranos, tenor, 2 baritones, female speaker, 8 mixed voices, and extended orchestra including four

saxophones The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

mouth organ A mouth organ is any free reed aerophone with one or more air chambers fitted with a free reed. Though it spans many traditions, it is played universally the same way by the musician placing their lips over a chamber or holes in the instrument, ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

synthesiser A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

, two

electric guitars Electric Guitars were an English band formed early in 1980 by Neil Davenport (vocals, lyrics) and Richard Hall (bass, vocals) who were both studying English at Bristol University. The band soon increased to a five-man line-up, with Andy Sander ...

and

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

. The composer also makes a

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created ...

Reception

The work was well received. The Gramophone's Rob Cowan noting the opera's "lack of compromise, its snorting aggression" The

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

wrote that Andriessen had "..developed an idiom in which minimalism, a distinct sort of rhythmic Stravinsky-ism and mainstream modernism are blended with masterful, totally personal ease.."

Film Release

Greenaway made a film version in 1999, though it was not shown in the United States until a 2004 premiere at the

Walter Reade Theater Film at Lincoln Center (FLC), previously known as the Film Society of Lincoln Center (FSLC) until 2019,Aridi, Sara (April 28, 2019).. ''The New York Times''. nytimes.com. Retrieved April 29, 2019. is a nonprofit organization based in New York Cit ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

.Midgette, Anne (11 May 2004)
"Challenging Opera Arrives In New York, Only on Film"
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosa - A Horse Drama Operas Operas by Louis Andriessen Peter Greenaway 1994 operas