Like several of her early operas, Judith Weir's The Consolations of Scholarship (1985) lives on the concert stage: the work lasts only twenty-two minutes, there is just one singer, and there are no costumes or scenery. A similar economy and restraint characterizes Weir's musical language from this period. The essay argues that The Consolations of Scholarship is as much 'about' the workings of the genre as it is 'about' the story it purports to tell. Indeed, Weir constructs music drama by emphasizing its artificiality, and her reworking of established conventions results in an unusually reflexive form of opera. Over the past twenty-five years, composer Judith Weir has produced an extensive catalogue of works, including three full-length operas: A Night at the Chinese Opera (1987), The Vanishing Bridegroom (1990), and Blond Eckbert (1993). These are among the few contemporary operas that have enjoyed lives beyond their premières. Commissioned by the BBC, the English National Opera, and Scottish Opera, respectively, they have been performed in both Europe and the United States. Yet these are but a small part of the composer's diverse body of music-theatrical works. There is an opera for television, Scipio's Dream (1991), based on Mozart's Il Sogno di Scipione; The Black Spider (1984), an opera for young performers; and a number of projects created in collaboration with choreographers and theatre directors. In addition, since the late 1970s, Weir has composed several small-scale theatrical works designed specifically for concert performance. The first of these is King Harald's Saga (1979), with a libretto constructed by Weir after Snorri Sturlson's Heimskringla. Although it is described by the composer as a 'grand opera in three acts', the work lasts only thirteen minutes; in addition, all the roles, including those of the Norwegian Army and two of Harald's wives, are played by a single, unaccompanied soprano. 2 In order to distinguish the characters, Weir presents a parade of vocal styles, differentiated according to text setting, register, and gesture. The composer prefaces each act and the epilogue with a spoken introduction, also performed by the soprano, which prepares the ensuing action and evokes a 'radio broadcast of a staged opera'. 3 These narrations play a reflexive role, commenting on the action and on the nature of operatic performance. King Harald's Saga is witty and entertaining, but it is more than that: Weir's brief, unstaged, 1 This article is based on my study 'Music Drama on the Concert Stage: A Study of Judith Weir's ''The Consolations of Scholarship'' ', Ph.D. diss.
