Program note
Soap Opera: the diary of one who vanishes is a 36 minute monodrama for countertenor and chamber ensemble consisting of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion.
In sixteen miniatures, the piece unfolds as a first-person narrative told by a bar of soap unaware of its own condition. It delights in swimming and hiding in the bath, falls in love with its mistress, resents the washcloth, and cannot understand why it is exiled to the uncomfortable soap dish or why it is constantly losing weight. Inevitably, it ends badly…
At once humorous and unexpectedly affecting, the work becomes a kind of metaphysics of toiletries—a metaphor for the human condition and its relation to loss and death. Written for the same instrumentation as 8 Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, Soap Opera shares a comparable strain of fantasy: perhaps less overtly brutal, but no less unsettling, and edged with a more wayward, irreverent tone.
R. Expert, countertenor — TM+, L. Cuniot, cond.
Details
Instrumentation
Countertenor, flute (also picc and alto flute), clarinet (also bass), violin, cello, piano & percussion
Duration
36'
Date
2010
First performance
Robert Expert: le savon — Ensemble TM+, Laurent Cuniot, conductor — Cité de la Musique de Nanterre, May 20 2010