Wilbur
Opera in Two Acts
1985
100 minutes
Libretto by Randall Shinn
For solo voices and orchestra
Composer notes: I had an idea for a comic fairy-tale opera and decided to write my own libretto. I previewed a first draft version for Kenneth Seipp of Arizona State University’s Lyric Opera Theater, and he suggested I further develop the dark side of the opera, which centered on a monstrous man named Bullstrode. Bullstrode had an intelligent, poetic mind trapped in an ugly exterior, and I relished expanding his role. He was obsessed with an outwardly beautiful princess who was vain and shallow. (As I have said elsewhere, when creating characters they “seem to reside in their own world, with each character becoming a distinct, fictional person.”)
The opera was successfully produced at Arizona State in 1985, and audiences and reviewers responded well to it.
Some years later Jon Linford, the director of Doña Ana Lyric Opera at New Mexico State University, asked me about producing the work there, and I told him that I would want to rewrite it. Having gained more experience as a composer and librettist, I felt that the story should center on the relationship between Bullstrode and his fiery-tempered young ward Bronwen, a witch barely in control of her powers.
That reworked and expanded version of the opera was premiered in Las Cruces in 2003 as Beautiful Princess Available for Rescue. From 2008 through early 2010 I made some changes and additions to that version, primarily to clearly make the Bronwen the central character in the story.