Opera and song

man and woman in fifties clothes sing operatically, man standing behind woman who is seated on a wooden chair

Libretti for two operas, song cycles and an oratorio

David Mason has written the libretti for composer Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter, and her oratorio, Vedem. His opera with composer Tom Cipullo, After Life, won the 2017 Dominick Argento Prize for Best Chamber Opera from the National Opera Association, and was followed by Cipullo’s opera The Parting.

The featured image is a detail from the album cover of The Parting, with album covers courtesy Naxos.
 

album front cover artwork for Lori Laitman, The Scarlet Letter; Tom Cipullo and Lori Laitman, Afterlife; Lori Laitman, Living in the Body; Tom Cipullo, The Parting

 

 

video still of Kitty Whateley singing Lori Laitman’s initial art song film, Sarong Song, which was the winner for Cinema Carnival’s Spring 2024 Season for Best Original Score, won for Best Animation in the Scotland International Festival of Cinema, won Best Original Song in the Global Music Awards, received Honorable Mention in the Mindfield Film Festival in Albuquerque and Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival, and the composer was nominated for Best Composer of the Season in the Montreal Independent Film Festival and Swedish International Film Festival

poems to sing

‘Sarong Song’ is the second in The Soul Fox, a song cycle composed in 2013 by Lori Laitman to a poem by her collaborator David Mason. The poems are a response to the upheaval as his second marriage dissolves. ‘Sarong Song’ seizes on the moment Dave from Colorado meets Chrissy from Tasmania and her mesmerising effect on him.

The singer here is mezzo soprano Kitty Whateley in a still from the video by Positive Note, 2022. The pianist is Simon Lepper.

➙  View the video

➙  Visit Positive Note

‘Sarong Song’ was Lori Laitman’s first art song film, made in conjunction with Positive Note Films in the UK. It was the winner for Cinema Carnival’s Spring 2024 Season for Best Original Score. It has won many other awards, mentions and nominations, including Lori Laitman’s nominations for best composer in two major film festivals.

Lori Laitman’s ‘The Apple Orchard’ (song with animation, with words by Dana Gioia) and ‘Sarong Song’ (words by David Mason) have been officially selected for the Berlin Kiez Film Festival 2025.

➙  See more here about the film awards.

Read some of David’s poems for ‘Sarong Song’ below…

 

Night Song

The breeze around our bed
cooling the summer night
is looking, looking for you,
except it has no sight,

so it must feel my skin
and probe the sheet for yours
and wonder where you’ve gone,
and wander on its course.

I keep the door ajar
to let the blindness in,
and dream in its embrace
of you, your touch, your skin.

The Soul Fox

for Chrissy, 28 October 2011

My love, the fox is in the yard.
The snow will bear his print a while,
then melt and go, but we who saw
his way of finding out, his night
of seeking, know what we have seen
and are the better for it. Write.
Let the white page bear the mark,
then melt with joy upon the dark.

– Commissioned by James Zakoura and Reach Out Kansas, Inc. (ROKI). Premieres: The University of Kansas School of Music, 22 September, 2013, and The Eastman School of Music, 2 October, 2013, with soprano Julia Broxholm and pianist Russell Miller.

– lyrics by David Mason © Naxos Rights (Europe) Ltd 2019