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- Michael Easton
The Obelisk
(a Comic Opera)- Wise Music G. Schirmer Australia Pty Ltd (World)
- pf
- Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone, Bass
- 40 min
Programme Note
The Obelisk a comic opera by Michael J. Easton set to a story by E. M. Forster.
Libretto and Music by Michael J. Easton.
The story is used by kind permission of the provost of Clare College, Cambridge.
In this opera we meet a husband (Ernest) and wife (Hilda) who are bored with one another and have arrived at a dreary English seaside town.
The husband, a schoolteacher, is intent on viewing a famous obelisk to which his wife reluctantly agrees. However they are unable to work out where it is. Enter two sailors, one a rather patrician young man (Stanhope) who ran away to sea to escape the stifling environment of his family home and the other, Tiny, a streetwise ‘macho’ man.
The wife encourages her husband to ask the sailors if they know the way to the obelisk but he is horrified to have to confront people he has not been formally introduced to. Eventually conversation is established and the group set out to view the obelisk.
En route Stanhope seduces the wife who all too readily succumbs. However more time has elapsed than they realised and they rush back to the town to purchase a postcard of the obelisk so they can pretend to have seen it. The card seller points out that there is no way they could have the seen the obelisk as it fell over some time ago.
At that moment the husband and Tiny re-appear and the husband takes the card remaking what an excellent likeness it is, much to the dismay of the wife and Stanhope.
The cast join in a final chorus expressing how delightful the day has been for all of them and they leave, happily ever after.
Media
Reviews
Marco Cinque, Elena Polevaya and Karma Nordqvis attack their roles with vivacity. While Hurd brings into play the musical traditions of Walton and to a lesser extent Britten, Michael Easton takes on board a host of styles from English vaudeville and Gilbert and Sullivan to the transparency of early 20th century French music.
But even with this patchwork of material The Obelisk is still musically satisfying. Based on a short story by E.M. Forster, this opera revolves around a young married couple, two sailors and the chance to explore relationships not hitherto encountered.
The cast of Marco Cinque, Elena Polevaya, Thomas Bult and Laurence Meikle vocally and dramatically work well as a team, and they play up all the comic turns