FULL THE QUEEN, MY LORD, IS DEAD (Tomàs Peire Serrate) Los Angeles CA 2022 Michelle Rice

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Queen, My Lord, Is Dead  
• Composer: Serrate Tomàs Peire  
• Libretto: Alejandra Villarreal Martinez    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Schoenberg Hall, Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA, Los Angeles, California  
• Recorded: June 11, 2022
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Michelle Rice
• Conductor: Stephen Karr   
• Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble  
• Stage Director: Indre Viskontas  
• Stage Designer: Lex Gernon  
• Costume Designer: Linda Muggeridge  
• Lighting Designer: Brandon Baruch  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Seven Sisters Productions  
• Date Published: 2024  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  KING MACBETH AWAITS THE APPROACHING ENEMY FROM THE BATTLEMENTS. HE HEARS TERRIBLE CRIES FROM WITHIN THE CASTLE. HIS SERVANT SEYTON APPROACHES AND REPORTS: “The Queen, my Lord, is dead.” With those six words, one of the most electric and enigmatic characters in literature is briefly dispatched, without further explanation. It has always seemed to me that Lady Macbeth is too big of a character to enjoy only the mere silhouette of a death. So much of her tale is left untold, and Seyton’s six words swell with story and hidden offstage action, compelling me to look into the wings. I wanted to create a work that would reveal what Shakespeare chose not to show us about the end of Lady Macbeth’s story, so I commissioned this opera. This piece shows one possible scene that might follow the sleepwalking scene in Shakespeare’s play. Working with the amazing award-winning composer Tomàs Peire Serrate and tremendously talented librettist Alejandra Martinez, we’ve come up with one possible telling of this character’s last act. Our story is about the character of Lady Macbeth from the world of Shakespeare’s play, and we’ve also expanded the borders of her reality to include elements from the life of the person upon which Shakespeare’s character was based. The result is a breathtaking account of Lady Macbeth in the most charged moment of her life, a queen whose race is run, confronting

  The Queen, My Lord, Is Dead consists of one extended scene featuring Lady Macbeth, completely alone. If included in a presentation of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, the stage action of the opera would appear after the indelible sleepwalking scene and before the announcement of the Queen’s death near the play’s conclusion. With The Queen, we attempted to reveal something of the ambiguous humanity and drive at the heart of this seminal character without removing her from the world of Shakespeare’s play, in which her astonishing presence is so vivid and mystifying. The absolutely unexplained nature of her offstage death has served to enshrine her inscrutability over the centuries; actors and audiences alike have been forced to make substantial assumptions about her motivations and her fate. We wanted to shed new light; to take Macbeth, open up its binding, and reveal some story bits that were scribbled in the margins; to bring the hidden heart and conclusion of Lady Macbeth’s story out of the shadowy wings and onto the lighted stage.

  0:00 1. Overture
  3:57 2. Do I sleep?
  7:51 3. I deny it not
  12:41 4. My inexpert hands
  18:34 5. By grace she was foresworn
  21:25 6. Mo chride, Lulach, my heart
  25:37 7. Dawn, wait still but a little while
  27:34 8. In our hearts a seed we planted
  30:58 9. What spirit trespasses hence?
  33:48 10. What palpable incontinent envy!
  36:24 11. Mo chride, Lulach, mo chride trom s’dulaich
  39:49 12. What was once my womanly silken crown

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