Some Favored Nook
for Soprano, Baritone and Piano
Composed by Eric Nathan
Libretto by Mark Campbell and Eric Nathan
Adapted from texts by Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Duration: 50 minutes
Tony Arnold, Soprano
William Sharp, Baritone
Seth Knopp, Piano
New Focus Recordings
Judith Sherman, Producer
“a work that deserves to be heard again and again.”
- Theater Jones
“intimate and personal … people were weeping at the end.”
- Arts and Culture Texas
“Eric has written a work that is of our time, but also timeless, specific in its story,
but universal in its message. It is a work that is important to hear.”
- Seth Knopp
Artistic Director, Yellow Barn
ABOUT THE WORK
[Image by Copland House]
Some Favored Nook is a dramatic song cycle that speaks to the themes of friendship, national division, morality and conscience. It takes place in Civil War-era America and is inspired by the correspondence between an unlikely pair: poet Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a 19th century abolitionist and women’s rights advocate known in his day as an essayist and military officer of the first Black regiment in the Civil War. In 1890, Higginson worked with Mabel Loomis Todd to posthumously publish the first edition of Emily Dickinson’s collected poetry, introducing it to the world.
At its heart, Some Favored Nook is a story about two individuals and their struggles—Dickinson’s to be a poet as a woman in an intensely patriarchal society, and Higginson’s to fight for the abolition of slavery and advocate for female writers’ voices.
The cycle sets texts from Dickinson’s letters and poems she sent to Higginson, and as many of Higginson’s letters to Dickinson are lost, additional texts are set from Higginson’s own essays and diaries from his “Army Life in a Black Regiment,” giving an important historical context to Dickinson’s work.
– Eric Nathan
TOURING PERFORMERS
LISTEN
Recording Excerpts
Full Recording
Tony Arnold, Soprano
William Sharp, Baritone
Seth Knopp, Piano
Recorded by Judith Sherman
Mastered by Antonio Oliart
LIBRETTO
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore, MD)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
Yellow Barn (Putney, VT)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
Copland House, CUNY Graduate Center (New York City Premiere) *Canceled due to COVID-19
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
The Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
Hudson Valley Music Club (Irvington, NY)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Seth Knopp
Emily Dickinson Museum/Amherst Women’s Club (Amherst, MA)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Molly Morkoski
Yellow Barn, 50th Anniversary Season Opening Night (Putney, VT)
Rachel Schutz, William Sharp, Gilbert Kalish
FirstWorks/Brown University (Providence, RI)
Tony Arnold, Andrew Garland, Molly Morkoski
Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX) (World Premiere)
Tony Arnold, William Sharp, Gilbert Kalish
Yellow Barn, Artist Residency (Putney, VT) (World Premiere)
Jessica Rivera, Andrew Garland, Molly Morkoski