Writing about a workshop of Act 1 from "Songs of the White Woman" during an all Kievman triple-bill at the Mannheim Nationaltheater, Germany.

"Carson Kievmans Verrücktes Musiktheater in Mannheim" "Run to the Nationaltheater, if you miss this you have only yourself to blame ! It is furious and phenomenal ! Liebevolle Ironie/mischt Kievman in die ernste Thematik seiner "Songs of the White Woman". Darin heftet sich Komponist aüf die Spuren einer sogenannten "veruckten", Ahnlichkeiten mit Fällen einer lebenden Person sind nicht zufällig: Inspiriert zu der Ein-Personen-Oper wurde Kievman durch seine New Yorker Nachbarin die den sinn für des Alltagliche verliert und in ihrer eigenen Welt lebt."

The libretto to SONGS OF THE WHITE WOMAN is based, in part, by a true story of a young heiress who moved to New York City to "conquer life." While in New York, over a twenty-year period, she slowly became mentally unstable and unable to function as a "normal" person. However, she was not a "bag lady" in the classic sense -- though she did dress down in her stereotypical dark second hand "Plain Jane" clothes, she was always perfectly neat and tidy, thin and intensely concentrated. She collected no bags, garbage or other items in shopping carts or wagons. Instead, this "bag lady" -- roamed Manhattan by day and returned each night to her Greenwich Village apartment hoarding a little notebook full of writings, drawings, cutouts and paste-ups. Each evening upon returning she would paste one of her daily 'creations' on the bulletin board of the apartment building. She did not live on the street like other people in her mental condition -- she was an heiress who's rent was automatically paid and, in fact, when the apartment building went co-op in the 1980's her apartment's shares were purchased by her trust. I lived in this building and over a 10-year period I made a collection of these drawings, paste-ups, and cutouts. The actual libretto here is completely fictional and the real "white woman" was only used as a model in which to take off from. All the events, situations, and characters, as well as any subtext or subplots are completely made up and are in no way meant to be taken as fact.

A young heiress moves to Manhattan. Her apartment if on the first floor of a Greenwich Village building which is on a quaint little tree-lined "village street." The set is the hallway of that building with screens capable of projecting both the "paste-ups" and other settings necessary like the tree-lined street or inside her apartment. However most of the opera takes place in the hallway (see set sketch).

White Woman - Soprano, Bank Examiner - Baritone

flute, clarinet (bs cl.), percussion 1 (tubular bells), percussion 2 (marimba - vibraphone), piano, violin, viola, cello, tape

Example:

[After making another silent wish she blows dandelion fuzz (or substitute) which then explodes it covers her completely in white powder (head to toe)]