|
Eight Woods and a Van uses eight works by Grant Wood and one by Jan Van Eyck to portray the life of Iowa's most famous artist. The opera portrays Wood with a dramatic arc, the playful, imaginative Iowa junior high school teacher; the painter inspired by Northern Renaissance art; the landscape artist who creates order and passion in the landscape; the artist at the height of his career going too far for the morals of this time; and the man always true to his rural Iowa roots. The opera is framed by a narrator, Frances "Fan" Prescott, the principal who hired Wood to teach art at McKinley Junior High in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
|