• Judith Weir
  • The Black Spider (1984)

  • Novello & Co Ltd (World)

Commissioned by Kent Opera with funds from the South East Arts Association

If wind instruments are unavailable, the opera may be performed with an accompaniment of piano and percussion only.

All roles and chorus parts may be sung at any octave, by high/unbroken voices and/or tenor/bass (suitable for performance by secondary school pupils)

  • [3cl/2tpt = suitable wind/str alternatives]/3perc/pf([=epf or eorg])/[gtr]
  • chorus (with many small solo parts)
  • 2 main solo singers
  • 1 hr
  • the composer
  • English, German

Programme Note

BRIEF SYNOPSIS

The three acts of The Black Spider are framed by five spoken interludes. The interludes are set in the present day and are very closely based on news reports from Poland about recent excavations of a tomb in Kraków and the strange events that followed. The three (sung) acts of the opera are very loosely based on the Swiss-German novella Die Schwarze Spinne (1842) by Jeremias Gotthelf.

PROGRAMME NOTE

When Norman Platt of Kent Opera commissioned this piece from me (it was written in 1983-4) he asked me to write something that would be performable by school students with the most basic skills, but would be at the same time ‘like an opera’. By this, I took him to mean a musical stage piece with a preposterous plot, a heroic soprano who sings on her deathbed, a plainly horrible villain and a credulous chorus. ‘The Black Spider’ has all this and more. Its tone is somewhere between a video nasty and an Ealing comedy – I was aiming at a historical comic thriller – but it has received many productions in Europe and America since its first performances by pupils of Frank Hooker School, Canterbury, Kent in 1985.

‘The Black Spider’ interpolates two stories; one is a modern day, apparently ‘true’ story taken from a report in the Times (London) newspaper in 1983. The second story, set in the 15th century, is very freely adapted from ‘die schwarze Spinne’ (‘the Black Spider’), a notable Swiss-German novella by the 19th century writer Jeremias Gotthelf.

The 15th-century story (sung as an opera) tells of some villagers oppressed by their wicked landlord, who sets them the impossible task of hauling a whole beech forest up to the top of the bald mountain where he lives. A mysterious green man appears to a young village girl, Christina, and offers to carry out the work on condition that she will marry him. Christina is about to marry another villager called Carl, but she feels she can sort out this small detail later on, and agrees to the green man’s terms. He carries out his part of the bargain, but Christina understandably breaks her promise, and marries her sweetheart, Carl. During the wedding, however, an evil-looking spider crawls out of her hand, and goes on to spread plague and pestilence about the neighbourhood. After many tribulations, it is Christina who saves the day by catching the spider and burying it deep in a churchyard tomb.

The modern day story (played as a documentary by actors) tells of the happenings following the excavations carried out at the tomb of the Polish king, Casimir IV, in Wawel Cathedral, Kraków in the 1970s. An increasing number of the site workers and archaeologists were struck by a deadly virus. Scientists were unable to give a convincing explanation – but at the end of ‘the Black Spider’, a reason is offered by the denouement of the 15th-century story.

© Judith Weir

Scores

Reviews

...with its touches of humour as well as its slightly subversive punning and parodying of opera forms, there are appealing elements that can be enjoyed by anyone, though perhaps not arachnophobes. ...At around an hour, this is neither a grand affair nor long drawn-out, but done with such breezy enthusiasm as to carry a smiling audience along. And all with the high hopes of infecting a younger generation with a passion for opera.

Rian Evans, The Guardian
29th May 2022
I can't think of any piece of theatrical art for children that succeeds as both entertainment and genuine art any better than does 'The Black Spider'.
The Riverfront Times
"Weir's 'The Black Spider'...studiously avoids the cute and the charming. It's a horror story from top to bottom, a creepy crawly ghastly thing that makes kids squirm in their seats even as they pay rapt attention... The musical language is tonal but liberally spiced with purposeful dissonance. ... The orchestration is both propulsive and rich in mood evoking effects.
St Louis Post
If the ultimate test is the impact the opera has on a young audience, then 'The Black Spider' passes with flying colours. My own children, both of primary school age, loved every bit of it. Not a murmur, not a fidget, they were too engrossed even to ask for an ice cream. Praise indeed!
The Music Teacher