Product Description
PDF score of I Set You Down from The Meeting House.
Press:
"...we have the possibility of writing operas that are not mostly love stories. And these young artists have all done exactly that! It is a brilliant approach to the art form, and such great inventiveness to concoct dramatic narratives that could well employ the heightened reality of this style of vocal performance...The Meeting House...It was poignant"
- Joann Farias
- Joann Farias
Program Note:
In our collaboration on The Meeting House, we wanted to explore the different vocal colors that treble voices are capable of, so we landed on a soprano duet representing one character, 15 years apart, at very different stages in her life. Thus, we have Temperance and her 12-year-old self. Throughout this work, we used found text to create a puritan hymn which is woven and fragmented throughout the work. At different times it is a prayer, a plea, or sometimes a memory. Make sure to listen for additional instrumental colors that place us in a humid New England Summer night. These can represent the movement of the moon, the fluttering of insect wings, and even the sound of a lost friend.
As we continued developing this monodrama with the same character portrayed by two singers, we became fascinated with ghost stories, history, and hysteria. In the late 1600s, a small, religious sect called the puritans left their homes in England in search of a land they believed God had promised them. Upon arrival, the paranoia surrounding the presence of a native people grew so rampant in the heat, the settlement began collapsing in on itself and the violence turned inwards into what we now call the Salem Witch Trials. Almost 300 years later in 1957, the state of Massachusetts issued an apology to the 25 people whose lives were taken in the name of feeling safe. The last of the accused were exonerated in 2001.
Thank you to our musicians, maestro, Jerri, Laura, the team at Seattle Opera, Mars Lynn, our cohort, and our friends and family.
- Taken from the introduction (co-written by Raya Tuffaha and Carolyn Quick) to The Meeting house at its premiere during Seattle Opera's 2025 Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab.
As we continued developing this monodrama with the same character portrayed by two singers, we became fascinated with ghost stories, history, and hysteria. In the late 1600s, a small, religious sect called the puritans left their homes in England in search of a land they believed God had promised them. Upon arrival, the paranoia surrounding the presence of a native people grew so rampant in the heat, the settlement began collapsing in on itself and the violence turned inwards into what we now call the Salem Witch Trials. Almost 300 years later in 1957, the state of Massachusetts issued an apology to the 25 people whose lives were taken in the name of feeling safe. The last of the accused were exonerated in 2001.
Thank you to our musicians, maestro, Jerri, Laura, the team at Seattle Opera, Mars Lynn, our cohort, and our friends and family.
- Taken from the introduction (co-written by Raya Tuffaha and Carolyn Quick) to The Meeting house at its premiere during Seattle Opera's 2025 Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab.
Instrumentation:
Soprano (or Mezzo Soprano) & Piano
Libretto by Raya Tuffaha
2.5 minutes
Vocal Range: D4-A5
Libretto by Raya Tuffaha
2.5 minutes
Vocal Range: D4-A5
Recording:
Score:
Text:
TEMPERANCE
That’s when I lost you.
I set you down.
You grew too heavy to hold on my hip.
All I saw:
her eyes,
pointed straight up, serene…
Summer in this forsaken land
reeks of death,
blinds the heart.
While the child writhed
and everybody / screamed,
INNOCENCE
/ Everybody, everybody
TEMPERANCE
my friend
was still.
INNOCENCE
What are you saying?
TEMPERANCE
I trembled,
I stood,
and I cried:
“Look at my friend,
murmuring,
staring at the sky…
there’s the witch.”
The congregation shrieked, unholy.
They dragged her away.
And I left.
- Raya Tuffaha (2025)
That’s when I lost you.
I set you down.
You grew too heavy to hold on my hip.
All I saw:
her eyes,
pointed straight up, serene…
Summer in this forsaken land
reeks of death,
blinds the heart.
While the child writhed
and everybody / screamed,
INNOCENCE
/ Everybody, everybody
TEMPERANCE
my friend
was still.
INNOCENCE
What are you saying?
TEMPERANCE
I trembled,
I stood,
and I cried:
“Look at my friend,
murmuring,
staring at the sky…
there’s the witch.”
The congregation shrieked, unholy.
They dragged her away.
And I left.
- Raya Tuffaha (2025)