Robert Manno (b. 1944, Bryn Mawr, Pa) is the composer of numerous chamber and orchestral works, song cycles and solo piano and choral works. The Atlanta Audio Society has called him “a composer of serious music of considerable depth and spiritual beauty.” Show more
After early instruction in piano and violin, Manno had a brief career as a jazz pianist in Philadelphia, then studied voice with Dolores Ferraro and composition with Romeo Cascarino. He moved to New York in 1965, studying jazz piano with John Mehegan and Steve Kuhn and voice with Cornelius Reid. He later continued his composition studies at the 28th Annual Composers Conference in Johnson, VT with Donald Erb and Mario Davidovsky.
Manno has received the Ernest Bloch Award, First Prize at the Delius Festival and many Meet the Composer Grants and ASCAP Awards. He holds a degree in voice from the Manhattan School of Music and an M.A. in music composition from New York University. He was a member of both the MET Chorus (1977-2001) and New York City Opera Chorus (1967-77) and appeared as a baritone soloist in recital, chamber music programs, and with the Westchester Symphonyand Alvin Ailey Dance Company. He and his wife, former MET violinist Magdalena Golczewski, reside in the Northern Catskills where they formed the Windham Chamber Music Festival, a concert series now in its twelfth season. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra and Catskill Mountain Chamber Orchestra. Show less
Gwynne Edwards is a native of Tonypandy, South Wales, not far from Dylan Thomas’s home town of Swansea. He holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Wales and the University of London and was until recently Professor of Spanish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Show more
Specialising in Spanish theatre and cinema, he has adapted and translated some forty plays, in particular the plays of García Lorca, of which there have been thirty or so professional productions both in the UK and in the United States. His translation of the screenplay of Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother formed the basis of a recent production in London’s West End. He is also the author of books on Lorca, Almodóvar, and Luis Buñuel, as well as on Spanish theatre of the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
In recent years, Gwynne has written two plays about the life of Dylan Thomas, Dylan Thomas in America and Dylan Thomas in London, both of which have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and other venues. Show less
Dylan and Caitlin Thomas's documented life together is replete with all the necessary ingredients for great theatre: poetry, love, comedy, sex, infidelity, jealousy, violence, and death, to name just a few. Dylan Thomas's short, volatile, and tragic life with his wife Caitlin Thomas was supremely “operatic” in every respect, and it has been thoroughly documented in many biographies and through many eyewitness accounts. The actual scenes from their life together require no additional dramatization or embellishment. Show more
Dylan Thomas, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, had an extraordinary comic sense and loved the company of ordinary people, especially if there was drink at hand. He was mothered, pampered, spoiled and physically abused by Caitlin, the untamed, wild provocateur.
There is so much extraordinary stage-worthy material in these two lives that it became more a question of what to leave out rather than what to put into the dramatization. Much of the actual dialogue has been taken from letters, writings and eyewitness accounts found in various biographies.
Act One is in Laugharne, a quaint sea-coast village in Southwest Wales where Thomas lived for most of his adult life. Act Two takes place in New York City, on board ship to Wales and ending in Laugharne. Show less
The following will be performed as part of VOX 2008. The Orchestral Prelude segues into a Prologue which is a solo scene by Caitlin. The setting is an Italian sea-coast background circa 1993 with Caitlin as an old woman reminiscing about her life with Dylan. Show more
Act One Scene 1, the sea coast is now that of the Estuary in Laugharne, Wales in the late summer of 1953. The scene opens with Aeronwy and her playmates Bronwen and Billy playing outside the writing shed as Dylan is working on the poem “In my craft or sullen art.” All the while the children distract him.
The scene shifts to the shore line where Caitlin gathers fish and complains about her life with Dylan and the children. After Aeronwy’s playmates leave mother and daughter discuss Aeronwy’s going away to school and Caitlin’s desire that Aeronwy study dance as Caitlin herself, a frustrated dancer, did.
Dylan begins to walk from the shed to the boathouse still intoning the poem.
He arrives before Caitlin and Aeronwy, puts a recording of “Di quella pira” on the Victrola which he cranks up to a ridiculous speed, then sits down to read with his feet on the table.
Caitlin quickly arrives, shuts off the Victrola, chastises Dylan and complains about their difficult life. Dylan cavalierly tells Caitlin there’s nothing to worry about since publishers are fighting over his work and he will soon be writing an opera with Stravinsky. Llewelyn enters and bickers with his sister. Dylan and Caitlin bicker as well with each cynically trying to out do the other. Caitlin spitefully talks of going to Italy with their youngest son Colm. The scene ends with Dylan chasing the children and Caitlin looking on unamused.
End of Act II Scene 1, “Dylan’s Aria” (the poem, “In my craft or sullen art”). The setting is an October 1953 poetry reading by Dylan at the YMHA Auditorium on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Prior to this aria, Brinnin and Reitell try to help Dylan sober up backstage before the reading. Dylan then stumbles onstage and indulges in much comic back and forth with the audience prior to the actual reading of the poem. Show less
