The Stronger is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in one act by composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Hugo Weisgall

Hugo Weisgall

Hugo David Weisgall was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions...

. The English language libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Richard Henry Hart is based on August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

's play of the same name. It premiered at the White Barn Theatre

White Barn Theatre

The White Barn Theatre was a small theater founded by actress, producer and theater impresario Lucille Lortel on the property of her estate in Norwalk, Connecticut that premiered numerous plays from major playwrights and plays that went on to successful Broadway and Off-Broadway runs.Lortel founded...

 in Westport, Connecticut

Westport, Connecticut

-Neighborhoods:* Saugatuck – around the Westport railroad station near the southwestern corner of the town – a built-up area with some restaurants, stores and offices....

 on August 9, 1952 and was dedicated to that theatre's founder, the actress Lucille Lortel

Lucille Lortel

Lucille Lortel was an American actress and theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse and theatrical award....

.

About the opera

The Stronger is an approximately 25 minute staged duodrama

Duodrama

A duodrama is a theatrical melodrama for two actors or singers, in which the spoken voice is used with a musical accompaniment for heightened dramatic effect. It was popular at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century....

 that is in many respects a monologue

Monologue

In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...

 with one singing role, Estelle (coloratura soprano

Coloratura soprano

A coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps. The term coloratura refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice...

), and one silent role, Lisa. The opera takes place at a bar on Christmas Eve. The two women meet at the establishment and Estelle talks to her friend Lisa about her family. In the course of the conversation Estelle informs Lisa that she knows that Lisa is in love with her husband Harold. As Estelle leaves the bar she comes to the conclusion that she is the stronger of the two women. Weisgall said of the opera:

"From the first I regarded this piece as an experiment, a kind of operatic exercise. My primary task was to find ways to translate Strindberg’s psychological monodrama, with its rapid, constantly changing moods and its almost total lack of sustained moments, into musical terms. The chief problem was that the music had to function alternately as background and foreground—at times pure atmosphere, then shifting between characterizing the protagonist, Estelle, and picturing the physical movements of the wordless Lisa. Also I sought somehow to balance the two roles more equally. Rather than conform to the traditional theatrical interpretation in which “the star” plays the silent role and comes out on top, I tried to leave open the question as to which of the two women is really “the stronger."

Performance history and recordings

The Stronger was first performed at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut for four performances in August 1952 by the Hilltop Opera Company of Baltimore, Maryland. The production used piano accompaniment and soprano Eva Bober portrayed Estelle for three of the four performances. Weisgall had composed the work specifically for the group during the spring and summer prior to its premiere.

The first performance of the work with an orchestra (scaled for only 8 musicians) was given at the Composers Forum at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York City, New York in January 1955 with soprano Adelaide Bishop

Adelaide Bishop

Adelaide Bishop was an American operatic soprano, musical theatre actress, opera director, stage director, and voice teacher. She began her career appearing in Broadway musicals as a teenager during the early 1940s...

 and the Columbia Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Siegfried Landau

Siegfried Landau

Siegfried Landau was a German-born American conductor and composer.He was born in Berlin, the son of Ezekiel Landau, an Orthodox rabbi, and Helen Landau. He was a music student at the Stern and Klindworth-Scarwenka Conservatories in Germany. His family emigrated to London in 1939...

. That 1955 performance was recorded and another recording of the opera was made with soprano Johanna Meier

Johanna Meier

Johanna Meier is an American operatic soprano, known as "one of the foremost Wagnerian sopranos of her era". She had an international career, including fourteen years at the Metropolitan Opera and three summers singing the role of Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the Bayreuth...

 and the Aeolian Chamber Players

Aeolian Chamber Players

The Aeolian Chamber Players is an American musical ensemble that is dedicated to the performance of chamber music. Founded in 1961 by violinist Lewis Kaplan, the group has been the resident ensemble at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine since 1964. The ensemble is particularly known for performing...

 on the New World Records

New World Records

New World Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in American music. The label was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to produce a 100 disc anthology covering 200 years of American music....

 label in 1972. Bishop also sang the role for the opera's New York City premiere in 1950 and directed the opera for a 1995 production starring soprano Brenda Lewis at the White Barn Theatre. The Baltimore Opera Company

Baltimore Opera Company

The Baltimore Opera Company was an opera company in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., based at the Baltimore Lyric Opera House. On March 12, 2009, the 58-year-old opera company announced plans to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation....

 staged the work in 1985 in a triple bill titled "American Portraits" that also included Thomas Pasatieri

Thomas Pasatieri

Thomas Pasatieri is an American opera composer.He began composing at age 10 and, as a teenager, studied with Nadia Boulanger...

's La Divina (1952) and the world premiere of Lee Hoiby

Lee Hoiby

Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism during a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned and irrelevant to modern society...

's Italian Lesson.

Initially Weisgall had intended for The Stronger to be a work that could be performed as a pair with his opera The Tenor (1952). However, years later he determined that it would fit better as part of a trilogy with two other operas he composed: Purgatory (1958) and Will You Marry Me?

Will You Marry Me? (opera)

Will You Marry Me? is an opera in one act by composer Hugo Weisgall. The English language libretto by Charles Kondek is based on the play A Marriage Has Been Arranged by Alfred Sutro...

(1989). The Stronger and Weisgall's The Golden Peacock were performed at the occasion of the latter work's premiere by the Opera Ensemble of New York with Cecelia Wasson as Estelle.