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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Manwhomistookhiswifeforahatopera.jpg
Design by Howard Fritzson
painting: David Bomberg, Lyons Café, 1912
Studio album by Michael Nyman
Released 1988
Recorded 1987
Genre Opera, Contemporary classical music, minimalism
Length 57:05
Language English, German
Label CBS Masterworks
Producer David Cunningham, Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman chronology
And Do They Do/Zoo Caprices
1986
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
1988
Drowning by Numbers
1988

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman to an English-language libretto by Christopher Rawlence, adapted from the case study of the same name by Oliver Sacks by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris. It was first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 27 October 1986.

The minimalist score makes use of songs by Robert Schumann, in particular, "Ich grolle nicht" from Dichterliebe, in which Dr. S. accompanies Dr. P., singing the ossia as a descant. Mrs. P. plays the piano, the actor actually playing if possible.

The plot concerns the investigation by a neurologist of the condition of a singer who suffers from visual agnosia. According to the liner notes, Morris, Rawlence, and Nyman had to spend much time convincing the real Mrs. P. (whose husband is implied to have been a known name) that they were not proposing a musical (her word) that would trivialize her late husband's situation in order to gain her consent.

Rawlence made a film version in 1987. It made brief omissions from the music (most notably the self-referential line, "That's Nyman! Can't mistake his body rhythm," when Dr. P. is watching television) and added documentary segments with Sacks and pathologist John Tighe working with the actual Dr. P.'s brain. They reveal that his condition was the result of Alzheimer's Disease that atypically affected only one portion of his brain until its latter stages. Unusually for an opera film not shot on a theatre stage, the singing was recorded live on-set by boom operators.


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