The Love Song of Mary Flagler Cary (2012)

Rhymes With Opera in performance at Mary Flagler Cary Hall, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (June, 2012)

Team

Two sopranos, baritone, two violas and piano

Preface

The Love Song of Mary Flagler Cary was written for Rhymes With Opera, for its 2012 mainstage production in New York and New Haven The New York venue was the Mary Flagler Cary Hall at the new DiMenna Center for Classical Music, and I wanted to write a piece that would be intimately connected to the namesake of the hall where it will be premiered. Mary Flagler Cary was heiress to the Henry Flagler’s Standard Oil fortune, and she established the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, which funded music, among many other disciplines. The Love Song of Mary Flagler Cary is a meditation on Mary’s life, the spirit of collecting, and the cycle of beginnings and endings for Henry, Mary, their estate, and the Charitable Trust, which winded up operations in 2009.

Special thanks to the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies for allowing Rhymes With Opera to use he portrait of Mary Flagler Cary as a part of the performance of this work.

Heard

• June 9, 2012 Mary Flagler Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music (New York, NY)


• June 10, 2012 The Big Room (New Haven, CT)