Tiriel (opera)

Tiriel, Op. 41, (Russian: Тириэль) is a 1985 opera by the Russian composer Dmitri Smirnov in three acts (9 scenes) with a symphonic prologue to his own English libretto after a poem of the same title by William Blake. It has been translated into Russian and German.

The opera was composed from 1983 until 1985 in Moscow, Russia. The libretto combines the text from Blake's early symbolic work "Tiriel" (c. 1789) with the addition of five of his poems: the "Introduction" and "The Divine Image" from the Songs of Innocence (1789), "The Tyger" and "A Divine Image" from the Songs of Experience (1789-1794), and "" from his Note-book (Manuscript Rossetti, 1793).

The premiere took place on January 28, 1989, at the Stadttheater Freiburg, Germany, with subsequent performances on January 31, February 2, 11, 19, March 15, 30, and April 13.

Time and Place: at the dawn of time

Duration 113 minutes.

The blind and aged king, Tiriel, calls down curses on his sons whom he has summoned to observe their mother's death. The sons bury their mother, but declare that they have tired of their father's tyranny and now will rebel against it. So Tiriel sets off wandering into the mountains.

Eventually he comes to the ‘pleasant gardens' in the Vales of Har, where he finds his own parents, Har and Heva, who are both quite senile and have become like children again. They invite Tiriel to help them catch birds and listen to Har's singing in the "great cage". In madness and dismay, Tiriel abandons them and sets out further on his wanderings.

Tiriel's wild brother Ijim finds him, captures him and takes him back to his children who are living in what once was his own palace. Tiriel, ever madder and more enraged, curses his children yet more passionately, calling down thunder and pestilence and destroying them. Doing so, he sends his favourite daughter Hela mad. Nonetheless it is Hela who must guide Tiriel back to his parents in the Vales of Har.

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