The Village Singer

In a small New England village at the turn of the century, Candace Whitcomb has been the lead soprano in her church choir for forty years when she discovers, quite unceremoniously, that her congregation has decided to dismiss her and replace her with a younger singer. Shocked and indignant, Candace sets out to make her opposition known. She tells off the minister, disrupts Sunday morning service (and the new soprano’s debut solo) by singing with her home organ from her cottage next door, and complains of her dire situation to her nephew, who is, of course, engaged to the young new soloist. By the time all gather round to forgive and make up, Candace has become deathly ill. She requests a solo from the younger soloist, and even as death beckons, she manages a parting shot.
When Stephen Paulus was commissioned to write a one-act opera for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s 1979 season, he had never even taken a course on opera, let alone written one. After confessing his inexperience to the Opera Theatre’s general manager, he set out to meet his patron’s expectations, reading through 100 short stories before coming across Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman’s ‘A Village Singer’. Freeman’s opening lines immediately conjured up a bittersweet, wholly American musical landscape for Paulus, and it quickly blossomed into The Village Singer. A piece whose premiere was deemed an astonishing debut, the opera has consistently been praised for the way in which it elegantly pairs musically well-defined characters and tenacious dramatic flair.