FULL LIFE STORIES: Rest in Peace & Silent Jack (Tim Benjamin) London 2015 James Fisher, Taylor Wilson

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: LIFE STORIES: Rest in Peace & Silent Jack  
• Composer: Benjamin Tim   
• Libretto: Tim Benjamin based on Chekov, Anthony Peter and Tim Benjamin that loosely draws on the scant known history of highwaywoman and notorious Wicked Lady Lady Katherine Ferrers    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: The Place, 17 Duke’s Road, London, UK  
• Recorded: July 21 & 22, 2015
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: James Fisher, Taylor Wilson
• Conductor: Antony Brannick   
• Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble  
• Stage Director: Tim Benjamin   
• Stage Designer: Amy Westwood  
• Costume Designer: Amy Westwood  
• Lighting Designer: Tom Sutcliffe  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: tete a tete  
• Date Published: 2015  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  Genesis

  LIFE STORIES: Rest in Peace is based on Chekhov’s short story Life in Questions and Exclamations, unusually told entirely through brief utterances, adapted and translated by Tim Benjamin. Sung in English.

   

  LIFE STORIES: Silent Jack is an original short story and libretto by Anthony Peter and Tim Benjamin that loosely draws on the scant known history of highwaywoman and notorious Wicked Lady Lady Katherine Ferrers.

   

  A libretto and complete programme featuring essays, imagery and further background information is available in print and digital form at: http://radiusmusic.org/giftshop.

   

  LIFE STORIES: Rest in Peace

  Moscow, 2024. An old man — homeless, sick — wakes and rummages through his meagre possessions, casting out objects that remind him of years gone by.

  Nappy packaging: His childhood, an extended family.

  A cane: An overbearing father, an ineffectual mother.

  Paper bag, dirty mag: As a teenager, the discovery of girls.

  Vodka, sherry, beer and champagne: the discovery of booze’s power to numb.

  Money becomes a problem.

  Health becomes a problem.

  Playing cards: gambling becomes a problem.

  He loses at cards, he loses his wife, he loses his child, heloses his dignity, he loses his self-­‐control.

  An old watch: he runs out of time.

  There is no interval. Instead, experience time travel, accompanied by J.S. Bach…

   LIFE STORIES: Silent Jack

  An English estate, 1724. A young woman stumbles, exhausted, into a secret cellar, the faded trappings of past glory decaying all around. Through a haze of pain, self-­‐pity and bitterness born of shattered hopes, she relives her life.

  The past. Amy lives an easy, comfortable life in a well-­‐staffed house. Her father returns from war in France and she meets and falls in love with his dashing comrade, Sir James, whom war has made wealthy.

  Amy marries James and life is truly blissful. For her 21^st birthday, James presents Amy with a brooch of silver and gold, set with a pearl.

  A distant company’s apparently successful business in trading government debt sets off a stock market surge and Sir James tries his hand at investing. The consequences for them both are dire– the crash leaves them financially ruined.

  James leaves Amy for one of their servants. Amy, destitute, seizes the initiative and begins a career in highway robbery. She swiftly gains a reputation as the fearsome ‘Silent Jack’, who never speaks, but with a gun, a nod and a bag, relieves victims of the valuables they carry.

  The present. Silent Jack has returned from the highway – a final foray, a shocking discovery and calamity

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