SEMMELWEIS Music by Raymond Lustig
Libretto by Matthew Doherty
About Semmelweis
Vienna, ca. 1848 – Hungarian-born obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, working at Europe’s premier hospital the Vienna Algemeine Krankenhaus, is drawing upon every experience of his life as he struggles to find the solution to one of history’s most devastating childbed fever epidemics, which is killing mothers at a horrific rate. But convincing the world of his simple solution will be a battle not just against the rigid Viennese status quo, but against his deepest demons.
Working on the front lines of the deadly fever—and with decades to go before Lister, Pasteur, and Koch formulated the germ theory of disease—Ignaz Semmelweis, struggles in darkness to understand the strange pattern of disease transmission he is observing. Why are his brilliant doctors losing more women than the midwives next door? Why does physical proximity to sick patients not seem to be a more relevant factor in transmitting the fever? The tragic death of his dear friend and colleague Jakob Kolletschka provides a valuable clue, but he must search far and wide, to reach deep into his mind, into his past and the stories of others, to memories strange and sometimes painful, to see the disturbing answer—that it is the doctors themselves who are transmitting the fever, their healing hands carrying unknown “particles” from autopsied corpses into the bodies of healthy women. Without an explanation for these mysterious particles, he is powerless to convince the medical establishment of this terrible truth. Each new death begins to seem a murder, and the ghosts of the dead women haunt him to madness.
Semmelweis is a musical drama for five singer/actors in one continuous 45-minute act. It has features of both musical theater and contemporary opera, and contains both spoken and sung text. Semmelweis is haunted by events from his and his wife’s childhood years in Budapest, and sweet simple songs swirl together with fatalistic waltzes and music of grim death. The story is told as if through dreams and memories, so staging is abstract and flexible. The work is conceived for contemporary performing arts spaces or music theater venues, as well as small-to- medium opera houses. It can be performed either in piano/vocal form or in its 16-piece chamber orchestra form: 2 clarinets, marimba and percussion, accordion, and strings (min. 3,3,3,2,1).
RAYMOND LUSTIG (composer)
Currently completing his doctorate at the Juilliard School, composer Raymond J. Lustig was recently awarded the prestigious Charles Ives Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and has won ASCAP’s Rudolf Nissim Prize, the Juilliard Orchestra competition, and the New Juilliard Ensemble competition. His works have been performed in venues ranging from New York City clubs and galleries to major concert halls and festivals around the world—from Le Poisson Rouge to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall—by groups like the Juilliard Symphony, the Bowling Green Philharmonia, American Opera Projects, Blind Ear Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Avian Music, Duo Noire, counter)induction, and Opera on Tap. His teachers have included John Corigliano, Robert Beaser, Samuel Adler, Philip Lasser, and Conrad Cummings. Before pursuing graduate study in composition, Lustig was a published researcher in molecular biology at Columbia University and Massachusetts General Hospital. He lives in New York, teaches at the Juilliard School, and is married to surgeon Ana Berlin, with whom he has collaborated frequently on both scientific and artistic projects. (www.raymondlustig.com)
MATTHEW DOHERTY (librettist)
Writer Matthew Doherty has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Poetry, and Glimmer Train, a literary quarterly. While completing his M.F.A. in the creative writing at the University of Alabama, Doherty’s article “On the Big Road: the Life and Times of a Truck-Driving Poet” won first prize in The Atlantic Monthly's student essay-writing competition. He was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, has driven for several trans-continental trucking lines throughout the U.S. and in Iraq, and is currently pursuing his law degree at Boston College.
November 21, 2008 Angel Orensanz Center, New York, NY Dramaturgical workshop with Dr. Jonathan Miller
in collaboration with Glimmerglass Opera MUSIC DIRECTION: Kelly Horsted
PERFORMANCES BY: Matthew Curran, Jessica Miller-Rausch, Josh Mertz, Donna Smith
October 3-4, 2008 South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, NY Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes (presented as The Doctors' Ward) MUSIC DIRECTION: Kelly Horsted
STAGE DIRECTION: Ned Canty
PERFORMANCES BY: Matthew Curran, Abigail Fischer, Josh Mertz, Donna Smith
Many of American Opera Projects' past works are ideal for production by other companies. If you are a producer and see something that is of interest to you, please contact us. We will be happy to send materials, or put you in direct contact with the creators.
RAYMOND LUSTIG (composer)
MATTHEW DOHERTY (librettist)
