Overview

The Tuneful Voice: Selected Libretti presents a collection of works by Eugene Benson, professor, novelist, playwright, and editor, written over a fifty-year period. The volume includes adaptations of the writings of such prominent authors as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde as opera, operetta, musical theatre, and oratorio. The death of Canadian painter Tom Thomson is probed in the oratorio The Mystery of Canoe Lake, and the extraordinary story of the Canadian theatre mogul Ambrose J. Small is dramatized in the musical The Millionaire Who Disappeared. Other subjects range from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. This is a book, rich in detail and personal insight, and an illuminating exploration of how musical theatre in its various genres is created. Benson's work has been performed by the Canadian Opera Company, the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guelph Spring Festival, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Westben Arts Festival, Opera-in-Concert (Toronto), Stratford Summer Music, and broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

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9781772443042

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Reviews

"Praise for the Libretti of Eugene Benson HELOISE AND ABELARD ""This is among the best new operas of the past decade, certainly surpassing anything heard in Britain, Tippet and Britten excluded."" --- Alan Blyth, The Times (London) EARNEST, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ""Irrespective of musical genres, Davies and Benson's Earnest must be the most unfailingly tuneful work of musical theatre Canada has ever produced.""---Christopher Hoile, Stage Door THE AUCTION: A FOLK OPERA ""The Auction fits into its Westben festival setting like a rooster on a fencepost."" ---John Terauds, Toronto Star"

Author Information

Eugene Benson is a prolific nonfiction writer, novelist, playwright, and librettist. He taught for many years at the University of Guelph, and retired with the title University Professor Emeritus. His scholarly publications include J.M. Synge (1982), English-Canadian Theatre (1987), The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre (1987), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (1994, 2nd ed. 2005)---the last three co-edited with L.W. Conolly---and The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature (1997, second edition, with William Toye). He edited the anthology Encounter: Canadian Drama in Four Media (1973) and the scholarly journal Canadian Drama/L'Art dramatique canadien (1980-90). His plays include The Ram (1967, broadcast by McGill Radio), Joan of Arc's Violin (broadcast by CBC in 1970 and published and staged in 1972), The Gunner's Rope, (broadcast by CBC in 1970 and published and staged in 1972), and The Doctors' Wife (broadcast by the CBC in 1973). He lives in Toronto. His memoir The Symmetry of the Tyger was also published by Rock's Mills Press.

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