The Juniper Tree is an opera co-composed by Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

 and Robert Moran

Robert Moran

Robert Moran is an American composer of operas and ballets as well as numerous orchestral, vocal, chamber and dance works.-Life:...

 in 1985 to a libretto by Arthur Yorinks

Arthur Yorinks

Arthur Yorinks has written and directed for opera, theater, dance, film, and radio and is the author of over thirty-five acclaimed and award-winning books, including "Hey, Al," a children's book which earned the Caldecott Medal in 1987....

 based on the Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

 fairy tale

The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)

The Juniper Tree is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. In some editions the story is called, The Almond Tree. The Text in the Grimm collection is in Low German....

.
The opera is in two acts and is scored for two 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...

s, bass, mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...

, four soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

s, 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...

, mixed chorus, children's voices and chamber orchestra. Each composer wrote alternating scenes and utilized each others' themes to provide structural unity. Glass retained ownership of the opera, and did not allow for the "live" recording of the premiere (with Jayne West

Jayne West

Jayne West is an American operatic soprano, who was born in White Plains, New York, and was raised in Framingham, Massachusetts. After graduation from Oberlin College, she moved to Boston, where she studied at the Boston Conservatory....

 and Sanford Sylvan

Sanford Sylvan

Sanford Sylvan is an American baritone, born in New York City in 1953. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, he made his Glyndebourne Festival debut in 1994 as Leporello in Don Giovanni by Mozart....

) to be released until 2009. Until then, Moran encouraged his fans to distribute bootleg copies so that people could hear it.

Performance history

It was premiered on December 11, 1985 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

.

For its 25th anniversary of creation, the Théâtre des Petites Garnottes presented the Canadian premiere of the opera in September, 2010 at the Salle Jean-Paul Tardif in Quebec, Canada.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, December 11, 1985 (Conductor: Richard Pittmann)
The husband	lyric 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...	Sanford Sylvan
His wife	lyric soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Jayne West
The son/the juniper bird	boy soprano	Lynn Torgove
The stepmother	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Valerie Walters
Her daughter	soprano	Janet Brown
The goldsmith	bass	David Stoneman
The cobbler	baritone	Thomas Derrah
The miller	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...	William Cotton
Village folk	chorus
Mama bird	soprano
Baby birds	children's voices

Synopsis

The famous Grimm fairy tale tells of a wicked stepmother who murders her stepson, fearing that he reminds her husband of his late wife and serves him up in a stew to his hungry, unsuspecting father. The boy’s sister buries her brother’s bones under a juniper tree where their mother is buried, and the child’s spirit returns as a singing bird who wreaks vengeance on the evil stepmother (dropping a millstone on her) before being restored to life in the bosom of his family.