Kate Soper’s (CRF 2017) latest work, “The Romance of the Rose,” was recently reviewed, and compared to the work of Richard Wagner, in the March 13th, 2023 issue of the New Yorker.
“In ‘The Romance of the Rose,’ her biggest work to date, Soper turns to the thirteenth-century Old French poem of that title, which was written jointly by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. The original text is a sprawling dream narrative in which a figure known as the Lover, having become enamored of a rose, converses with dozens of allegorical figures, including the God of Love, Lady Reason, and Shame. Soper adds a male character named the Dreamer, who introduces the scenario, extracts the Lover from the audience (the role becomes female), and soon falls prey to emotional complexities. Passages from Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, and Tennyson are also interpolated, though most of the words are Soper’s own… I came away [from the performance] all the more convinced that Soper is a major music-theatre talent, one who deserves to have Wagnerian resources at her disposal.”
Read the complete article here.
Illustration by Fabien Corre.