FULL The Dorty Letters of James Joyce (Stephen Crowe) London 2014 Oliver Brignall

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Dorty Letters of James Joyce  
• Composer: Crowe Stephen   
• Libretto: James Joyce    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Kings Place Hall One, London, UK, The Crowe Ensemble  
• Recorded: August 2014
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Oliver Brignall
• Conductor: Genevieve Ellis   
• Orchestra: Crowe Ensemble  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: tete a tete  
• Date Published: 2014  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Genesis

“When I was writing this piece I happened to be living next door to a famous composer. One afternon, I was playing melodies from the song-­‐cycle on the piano when I heard a crazy commotion in the next room. Somebody was smashing plates and chairs, and singing along to my music in a hideous mocking voice. It was the musical equivalent of a dirty protest. I went round to see what on earth was going on, thinking that I might very well be attacked by some nutter. The famous composer opened the door and told me they had a deadline coming up for a symphony, and that they could hear everything coming from my room: ‘Every note, every cough and every fart’. ‘That’s a shame, as there are quite a lot of farts in this piece’, I said, trying to maintain some semblance of composure”. – Crowe (2014)

About

A song cycle for tenor, piano and other instruments. This is a work in progress, and will exist in various forms.

Written for Oliver Brignall. 

The surviving letters of James Joyce to his wife Nora are absolutely riveting. The rudest of them are pornographic to the point of hilarity, but they also reveal Joyce’s vulnerable side. They are significant documents of the twentieth century’s most notorious novelist and deserve an audience beyond literary scholarship. The letters reveal an emotionally reckless man. Within the space of a few lines, Joyce could scold Nora, beg her forgiveness, admonish her or prostrate himself. He adored her, but fretted constantly that she might have been unfaithful to him. In fact, Nora once stated the Joyce wanted her to be unfaithful, in order to fuel his writing.

A quick rundown of his terms of endearment: “darling”, “mistress”, “faithful”, “whore”, “queen”, “cuntie”, “schoolgirl”, “wriggling little frigger”, “fuckbird”, “strange-­‐eyed Ireland”, “dark-­‐blue, rain-­‐drenched flower”. This list of nicknames illustrates the complex tangle of what Nora meant to Joyce. However, he was not simply unloading his sexual fantasies onto an objectified woman; this was mutual communication. It was Nora who initiated the sexy letter-­‐writing; Joyce even considered Nora’s letters to be more outrageous than his own. Sadly Nora’s letters have not survived, but Joyce gives us a few glimpses of what they contained – referring to them several times: “…it is thrilling to hear that word, write it big…”, “…the part where you say what you will do with your tongue…”.

One of the remarkable things about Joyce’s most explicit letters is that they were not, as might be expected, written at a time of early courtship. Though not married for another twenty years, they already had two children by 1909, so this was hardly the first flash of lust – it was simply how they communicated. Joyce often spoke about the lack of real humanity in literature. There were “exciting”, and “wonderful” characters, but too few who were “complete”. Hamlet, Faust, Dante, Don Quixote: none of these men came close to the full experience of Odysseus. Joyce aimed to expand on this character with his infamous reinterpretation of The Odyssey. Looking at (and listening to) these letters we can appreciate the full measure of James Joyce, perhaps more intimately than Odysseus or his own Leopold Bloom.

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