The Sermon

OVERVIEW

Title: The Sermon
Composer: John Harris
Librettist: Bernard MacLaverty
Commissioned By: Tapestry Opera's Composer-Librettist Laboratory
Language: English
Producer: Tapestry Opera
Roles:

Role	Voice Type	Range ?	Character Description
Boy	middle	Bb2-C#5	A boy
Priest	middle-low	E2-F4	The priest
Woman 1	silent-spoken	silent	Woman in congregation
Woman 2	silent-spoken	silent	Woman in congregation

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Orchestration: Piano

SYNOPSIS

A boy is sitting through the longest sermon ever on the most boring subject ever: purity. He didn’t sleep well the night before, and so convinces himself that he can close his eyes during the sermon without much trouble. But it doesn’t take long for the priest’s longwinded comparison of venial sins to tablecloth stations to blur and distort as the boy nods off.

MUSIC DESCRIPTION

A repeating progression of long, held chords in the piano, reminiscent of Christian liturgical organ music, underpins much of this scene, while overtop a priest—sometimes singing, sometimes intoning without precise pitch—recites a sermon. Occasionally, the piano remains stuck for a length of time on the same, repeated pitches, as an exhausted boy in the church listens to the priest and struggles to stay awake.

SCORES FOR PURCHASE

Arias & Excerpts:

The Sermon - The Sermon

A Boy slowly falls asleep as a Priest gives sermon on purity, and words go from meaningful to jibberish.

Character	Voice Type	Range ?
Boy	middle	Bb2-C#5
Priest	middle-low	E2-F4

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PREMIERE PRODUCTION INFORMATION

Premiere Production: Tapestry Briefs 2009, September 25-27, 2009 at Tapestry Opera's Ernest Balmer Studio, Toronto, ON
Producers: Tapestry Opera
Cast:

Role	Name
Boy	Keith Klassen
Priest	Peter McGillivray
Woman in congregation	Carla Huhtanen
Woman in congregation	Lauren Phillips

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Premiere Production Team:

Role	Name
Director	Michael Patrick Albano
Music Director	Dr. Christopher Foley
Music Director	Jennifer Tung
Stage Manager	Nicole Poirier
Lighting and Sound	Joel Weiss

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CREATION

QUOTATIONS FROM CREATIVE TEAM

In a warm hall or church, which of us has not felt ourselves dozing off at a sermon or a political speech? This situation is dramatised from a coming-of-age novel The Anatomy School which I wrote some years ago. This was the last piece I wrote at the LIBLAB. Up until that point nobody had tried anything comic. Could opera make us laugh? This was a composer-led fragment, and John Harris had played me a chaconne which had become an ear-worm for him. It has a solemnity and beauty, and it does remarkable things to the words I wrote on the page.

- Bernard MacLaverty

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