Written 1994 Composer Louis Andriessen Language English | First performance 2 November 1994 Librettist Peter Greenaway | |
 | ||
Similar Writing to Vermeer, Von heute auf morgen, Le Grand Macabre, Káťa Kabanová, The Rake's Progress | ||
Rosa, A Horse Drama is an opera composed by Louis Andriessen to a libretto by Peter Greenaway. The libretto was the sixth in Greenaway's Death of a Composer series which explores the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, two real (Anton Webern and John Lennon), and the remaining eight fictional. It premiered at the Dutch National Opera on 2 November 1994 in a production co-directed by Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke. A recording of the opera was released on the Nonesuch label in 1998.
Background
This opera tells the story of Juan Manuel de Rosa, a fictitious Argentine composer who intended to emigrate to the United States to write film scores for Westerns, but was instead murdered in Uruguay. The most memorable aspect of the story is that Rosa falls in love with his horse. The opera is scored for 2 sopranos, tenor, 2 baritones, female speaker, 8 mixed voices, and orchestra.
Greenaway made a film version in 1999, though it was not shown in the United States until a 2004 premiere at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City.