opium songs

for countertenor and piano

2021/23

12’

  1. so they gave me opium

  2. wax and wail

commissioned by the St. Marylebone Festival and MAX Musicians

premiered by Andrew Watts and Gavin Roberts

(1) text from a letter by Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning:

…it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain—no acute suffering to keep down from its angles — should need — [opium in any shape] 

… I don't take it for 'my spirits' in the usual sense; you must not think such a thing—But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite—and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable— …as if one's life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned… within it, and beating and fluttering to get out, at all the doors and windows.

So [they] gave me opium— …and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir, — [because] the tranquillising power has been wonderful… — it would be dangerous to leave off [the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says —]

…And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond [the opium-eaters; and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.]

and (2) text from the poem A True Dream by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

And larger and larger they waxed still,
And longer still and longer;
And they shrieked in their pain, "Come, come to us,
We are stronger, we are stronger."

Upon the ground I laid mine head,
And heard the wailing sound;
I did not wail, I did not writhe —
I laid me on the ground.