Lee Hoiby's opera is based on the Tennessee Williams play of the same name and is set in a small Mississippi town where the young, sexually repressed Alma Winemuller is jilted by the wild and undisciplined town doctor, John Buchanan. While aware on one level of her alluring and charming nature, Alma is increasingly haunted by inner demons that brand her too fragile to cope with the harsh realities of the world around her. The play revisits a tragic theme often found in Williams' work where his protagonists, often female, valiantly confront emotional crises only to be ultimately broken by their inability to cope with the conditions that surround them.
|