Music Theatre since 1990 - Schott Music

Synopsis
This story captures the everyday happenings of rural America in all of its glories and shortcomings.
Like a rill, a term for a small stream or brook, the opera intermittently visits the lives
of its rural inhabitants in a non-linear, fluid fashion. Such glimpses of small town life here
include woman discussing home decoration, schoolboys gossiping about fellow students,
farmers describing quality hay, and other trivial scenes that add up to provide an overall picture
of country life.
This Is the Rill Speaking
26.04.2008 Purchase College Conservatory of Music
This Is the Rill Speaking, a setting of a Lanford Wilson play, offers a vision of rural, small-town life
through snatches of conversation patched together like a comfortable quilt. Mr. Hoiby‘s unfailingly
gracious music mixes a nostalgic glow with moments of winking mischief and gentle seduction.
Six singers fill eleven roles, accompanied by a string quartet, double bass, wind quintet and harp.
(Steve Smith, The New York Times, April 30, 2008)
Mr. Hoiby‘s opera is a one-acter, and a lovely, finely wrought thing. It is pleasant and endearing,
but not sweety-sweet. It is playful, jazzy, casual, insouciant, earnest, and warm. It has the melodies
and modulations typical of Mr. Hoiby. It is very American, though not the least unsophisticated.
And it is very human. (Jay Nordlinger, The New York Sun, May 1, 2008)
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