Of Mice and Men is an opera in three acts by the American composer Carlisle Floyd

Carlisle Floyd

Carlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...

. The English libretto was written by Floyd and is based on the novella of the same name

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....

 by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

. The opera was composed in 1969.

History

Of Mice and Men was first performed on January 22, 1970 by the Seattle Opera

Seattle Opera

The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...

 at the Moore Theater. The opera has been performed frequently within the United States. In 2004, Albany Records

Albany Records

Albany Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Peter Kermani in 1987, and is based in Albany, New York.-External links:**...

 produced a recording of the opera. The opera is included for performance in the 2011 Opera Australia

Opera Australia

Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...

 season and is directed by Australian

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 film director Bruce Beresford

Bruce Beresford

Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 40-year career.-Early life:...

.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, January 22, 1970 (Conductor: – Anton Coppola Anton Coppola Maestro Anton Coppola is an American opera conductor and composer. He is the uncle of film director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, as well as the great-uncle of Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Gian-Carlo Coppola , Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman.-Life:Coppola started his... )
Lenny Small	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Robert Moulson Robert Moulson Robert Moulson was an American classical tenor who had an active international career in operas and concerts from the late 1950s through the 1980s...
George Milton	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Julian Patrick Julian Patrick Julian Patrick was an American operatic baritone and voice teacher. Born in Mississippi, Patrick grew up in Birmingham, Alabama where he was a member of the Apollo Boys Choir...
Curley	tenor	Harry Theyard Harry Theyard Harry Theyard , tenor, is a native of New Orleans and is a 1957 graduate of Loyola University of the South, where he studied under Dorothy Hulse, who was also the teacher of Audrey Schuh and Charles Anthony...
Curley’s Wife	soprano	Carol Bayard
Candy	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Archie Drake
Slim	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Kerry McDevitt
Carlson	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Erik Townsend
Ballad Singer	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Gerald Thorsen
Ranch Hands (at least 8)	male chorus Choir A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...	Seattle Opera Male Chorus

External links

• Amadeus Almanac, accessed 4 August 2008