Search - Franklin & Marshall Opera Theater :: Benjamin: An Opera in Two Acts

"Benjamin" (1987) is an opera in two acts. The music is by John Carbon and the libretto by Sarah White. The opera was commissioned and premiered in 1987 by Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) to celebrate the college's bicentennial. To celebrate Franklin's 300th anniversary in 2006, F&M revived the work in a new production, during which this recording was made. The opera explores facets of the legend called Benjamin Franklin. A printer-publisher by trade, Franklin respected the written word, used it to achieve his goals, and worked industriously toward the creation of his own persona, keeping copious notes, writing thousands of letters, and composing an autobiography. Three of our five scenes emphasize verbal signs, and show them combining, like the composer s musical phrases, to invent a character named Benjamin . In two other sequences, the Prologue and the Paris scene, a different type of Franklin invention is highlighted, the Glass Harmonica, to suggest those playful, non-verbal, less purely rational traits that he had in abundance but did not always sufficiently cherish. A pervasive theme, involving orchestra, principals, chorus and dancers, arias and ensembles, is that of the Gulf Stream. Its color, warmth and speed embody the best intellectual, aesthetic, political and personal currents of Benjamin s life, and perhaps of our own lives as well.