Postcard from Morocco is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in one act composed by Dominick Argento

Dominick Argento

Dominick Argento is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music...

 and libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 written by John Donahue that was comissioned by the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera

Minnesota Opera

The Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen...

). It is based on A Child's Garden of Verse by Robert Louis Stevenson. The setting is a train station in an exotic place, 1914. The world premier of the opera was on October 14, 1971, at the Cedar Village Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

. Conducted by Philip Brunelle and stage direction by John Donahue. The set and costume designer was Jon Barkla and the lighting designer was Karlis Ozols. It was a huge success and went on to be produced in New York and around the world. This was Argento’s first international success. A masterpiece it exemplifies Argento’s abilities as a composer, “Argento’s Music speaks to his audience with a singular freshness and ardour”. Postcard is a moving and artful piece, which asks us to think about our motivations in life.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, October 14, 1971 (Conductor: Philip Brunelle Philip Brunelle Philip Brunelle is an American conductor and organist. He founded VocalEssence in 1969 and remains the artistic director today... )
Mr. Owen	Tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Vern Sutton
Lady with a Cake Box	Soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Barbara Brant
Foreign singer	Mezzo-Soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Janis Hardy
Lady with a Hand Mirror	Coloratura soprano Coloratura soprano A coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps. The term coloratura refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice...	Sarita Roche
Man with Old Luggage/ Puppet #1	Lyric tenor	Yale Marshall
Shoe salesman/ Puppet #2	Baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Barry Busse
Man with a Cornet Case/ Puppet Maker	Bass	Edward Foreman
Two Mimes	None	Wendy Lehr, Bain Boehlke

Orchestration

The orchestra and cast are both small. The cast consists of only seven singing characters and the orchestra is small; a piano, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, violin, viola, bass, a small percussion section, and classical guitar. The orchestra at times feels like a band in the train station scoring the action around them. The score also calls for non-traditional sounds of a train at the beginning and end of the piece. It asks for a whistle, it is possible to include the sound of the train (steam releasing, brakes) at the station for the beginning and end of the opera book ending it, emphasizing the station as a place people merely pass through not dwell in. These can be done with a live whistle but using a sound system provides greater range in dynamics and timbrel quality of the train sounds.

Synopsis

The characters are waiting in a train station; each of them reveals what they do but will not reveal the contents of their luggage, which they can't part with. The puppet master, who appears to live in the train station, tries to control and manipulate the passengers. The passengers all leave except one, Mr. Owen, who acts out a story about sailing away on a boat. Mr. Owen rebels against the puppet master breaking his control over the passengers. The puppet master does retain his control over one of the passengers, The foreign singer, whom he eerily controls at the very last moments of the play.

Analysis

This opera “has no clearly discernible plot but makes its effects through a powerful series of images and inferences,” The opera highlights human cruelty, and the resulting armor we all put up. Questioning others motivations, these characters spend the entire opera suspicious of one another not really seeing their common traits and not aware of the puppet master who is skillfully trying to seduce the passengers to become his marionettes. One critic says, "I cannot help feeling uncertain about a libretto in which opportunities for emotion are so easily come by… that the significance of what goes on has to be explained in a foreword.” This can be reinforced by the way Argento describes the process, “an untitled piece…a dozen or so typewritten pages of dialog, unassigned to any specific individual.” The lack of structure is a tool used by the creators to control the response forcing a lack of trust in our purpose in life. It is a surrealist opera about a group of strangers in a train station. These passengers guard their possessions because they define them. It is existentialist like the plays of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

. Their possessions create their need for existence rather than some self-motivation.The librettist gives these directions to help define the setting and general tone of the piece It should be set, “distinctively off or odd…not morbid or peculiar so much as wacky or exotic”. This and the oddities of the score, help classify it as surreal; an amalgamation of music and text condensed into a one-act opera.

Form

Postcard is an eclectic mix of forms. There is a selection from Wagner in the opera (Souvenirs de Bayreuth), which is an orchestral section during which a play is put on by mimes. In addition, it incorporates cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

, and operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

. Argento describes himself as including “the whole world of music in his oyster.” One describes the piece saying, “Mr. Argento’s idiom is largely tonal, conservative yet distinctly his own, and borrows from ragtime and other strains of popular music.” This eclectic mix adds to the lyrics by reinforcing the exotic and distinctively odd goals of the piece.

Recording

Year	Cast (Lady with a Hand Mirror, Lady with a Cake Box, Foreign singer, Man with Old Luggage/ Puppet #1, Mr. Owen, Shoe salesman/ Puppet #2, Man with a Cornet Case/ Puppet Maker)	Opera House and Orchestra, conductor	Label
1972	Sarita Roche, Barbara Brant, Janis Hardy, Yale Marshall, Vern Sutton, Barry Busse, Edward Foreman	Philip Brunelle Philip Brunelle Philip Brunelle is an American conductor and organist. He founded VocalEssence in 1969 and remains the artistic director today... Orchestra of the Center Opera Company Minnesota Opera The Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen...	Audio CD: Desto Desto Records Desto Records was an American classical music record label based in New York and founded in approximately 1964. Its records were distributed by CMS Records of Mount Vernon, New York beginning in the 1970s...