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FULL Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary (Matthew Welch) San Francisco CA 2023
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary
- Composer: Welch Matthew
- Libretto: Matthew Welch based on the published diary of Filipina-American Angeles Monrayo (1924-1928). Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Magic Theater at Fort Mason, San Francisco, California
- Recorded: June 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: San Francisco Girls Chorus
- Conductor: Valérie Sainte-Agathe Artistic Director & Conductor
- Orchestra: Instrumental Ensemble
- Chorus: San Francisco Girls Chorus
- Stage Director: Sean San José
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Matthew Welch
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Program notes by Matthew Welch:
Acknowledgement: This opera would not be possible without the generous guidance of Filipino and Filipino-American artists and attaches: Angel Velasco Shaw, Tess Rances (Asian Cultural Council, Manila), Rocky Cajigan, Carla Rosita, Jason Domling, Alexander Tumapang, Dr. Ramon Santos, Sol Trinidad, The University of the Philippines Center for Ethnomusicology (Quezon City), Terri Torres (Filipino-American National Historical Society Museum, Stockton), Florante Aguilar, Patti Kilroy, Levy Lorenzo and PatriciaAn Liston-Abujen (Angeles Monrayo’s granddaughter). Additionally great thanks to both the Creative Work Fund and the MAP Fund for their generous support in this work, as well as the Asian Cultural Council who have supported my research in the Philippines.
Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary, is a choral-opera for the San Francisco Girls Chorus and takes its name from the published diary of Filipina-American Angeles Monrayo (1924-1928). My approach to the libretto was to select threads from Angeles’s eloquent personal reflections and anecdotes to weave a young woman’s coming-of-age story and tale of immigration to the US from the Philippines during the American-Philippine Colonial Era.
Angeles is a lover of song and music, evidenced by both the amount and variety of which she mentions in the diary, represents her life’s range, from her native birthplace in Romblon in the Visaya’s, through her stay in Hawaii, and eventual settling in Stockton, California, in a neighborhood known then as Little Manila. Her tale, based upon her observations of herself and her community, is set as a metaphor for the unique cultural forming of the Philippine-American diaspora. It can serve as a mirror to our current socio-political issues of equality in immigration, labor, gender, and culture.