This section has the following options:

Introduction   Awards   Bibliography   Chronology   Interview

INTRODUCTION

Louise Talma was born on October 31, 1906 in France. She was raised and educated in New York City. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from New York University, and a Masters of Arts degree from Columbia University. While working on her undergraduate degree, she also attended the Institute of Musical Arts (Juilliard School of Music). Perhaps her more rigorous training, however, was at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, where she studied piano with Isadore Philipp and, later, composition (for 17 summers) with Nadia Boulanger, who remained a close friend and colleague for many years.

Since the early 1940s Talma visited the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Here she came under the influence of the “Boston group” of composers: Lukas Foss, Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, Claudio Spies, Arthur Berger and Alexie Haieff. Throughout her life Talma composed most of her music at MacDowell. Upon her death Talma showed her appreciation for the MacDowell colony with a bequest of one million dollars to provide for future generations of artists.

Talma’s compositional output comprises more than forty major works, including four orchestral pieces and a full-scale three-act opera (see the work list in Appendix A). Her compositions have been performed by the Baltimore Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Frankfurt Opera House, among others. Her work in music has been widely acclaimed, and she has been awarded honorary doctorates from Hunter College (1983), Bard College (1984), and St. Mary-of-the-Woods (1991). She was also honored with two Guggenheim Fellowships, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fulbright Grant. Talma was the first woman to receive two Guggenheims, the first woman elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1974), the first American woman to have a full-scale opera performed in Germany, the first American to teach at Fontainebleau, and the first woman to receive the Sibelius Medal for composition.

Talma died on August 13, 1996, just two months short of her ninetieth birthday, at Yaddo, the artists’ colony near Saratoga Springs, New York. She had been composing the song cycle, "The Lengthening Shadows," which remains unfinished.

AWARDS
The following is a partial list of awards and honors given to Louise Talma in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments in music:
1927, '28, '29	Isaac Newton Seligman Prize for Composition, Institute of Musical Art.
1927	Pleyel Prize for Piano, Fontainebleau School of Music.
1927	National Federation of Music Clubs, winner of the Eastern Interstate Piano contest.
1928	Presser Prize for Piano, Fontainebleau School of Music.
1932	Joseph H. Bearns Prize for Composition, Columbus University ($ 1200).
1937	Society for the Advancement of Women in the Liberal Professions, Paris, Prize for Composition.
1938, '39	Stovall Prize for In Principio Erat Verbum, Fontainebleau School of Music.
1946	Juilliard Publication Award for Toccata for Orchestra.
1946, '47	Guggenheim Fellowship each year.
1947	North American Prize for Piano Sonata No. 1 ($1,000)
1951	French Government "Prix d'Excellence de Composition."
1953	Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Nu Chapter, Hunter College.
1955-56	Senior Fulbright Research Grant, ten months in Rome, to compose The Alcestiad.
1959	Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission to write a chamber piece All the Days of My Life.
1960	Marjorie Peabody Waite Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for The Alcestiad
1963	National Federation of Music Clubs, Award "for advancing national and world culture through distinguished service to Music."
1963	National Association for American Composers and Conductors, Award "for outstanding service to American Music."
1963	Sibelius Medal for Composition from the Harriet Cohen International Awards, London.
1966	National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D. C. Sabbatical leave Grant ($7,500).
1974	First woman composer elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1975	Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ($ 3,750).
1975	Clark Lecturer, Scripps College, Claremont, California.
1975	Certificate of Merit, Sigma Alpha Iota.
1976	Samuel Simons Sanford Fellow, Yale University.
1977	Honorary member of the President's Circle, Hunter College.
1980	Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy.
1983	Honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters received from Hunter Colege.
1984	Honorary degree of Doctor of Arts received from Bard College.
1985	League-I. S. C. M. Citation "In honor of her service and dedication to contemporary music."
1991	Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters received from St.-Mary-of-the-Woods College.
Talma is a corporate member of the Edward MacDowell Association, and a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fontainebleau Fine Arts and Music Association. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the League of Composers, International Society for Contemporary Music, a charter member of the American Society of University Composers and a fellow of the American Guild of Organists. She has held the position of member of the Board of Directors of the American Music Center (1986), and the Board of Directors of the I. S. C. M. (1970-73 & 1979-82).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ASCAP International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1981.

Barkin, Elaine. "Louise Talma, 'The Tolling Bell.'" Perspectives of New Music, 10, No. 2 (1972): 142-52.

Berger, Arthur. "Composers League Opens its Series." New York Sun, 22 January 1945, p. 19.

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Berges, Ruth. "The German Scene." The Music Magazine, 164 (May 1962): 33-34.

Block, Adrienne Fried, and Carol Neuls-Bates, eds. Women in American Music: A Bibliography of Music and Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979.

Brozen, Michael. "Sonata for Piano and Violin." Musical America (June 1963): 31.

_______. "Three Duologues, Michael and Beveridge Webster." High Fidelity/Musical America (June 1968): MA29.

Cohen, Aaron I. International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Cohn, Arthur. Recorded Classical Music: A Critical Guide to Compositions and Performances. Riverside, NJ: Schirmer Books, 1981.

Contemporary Composers and Their Works. Music and Artists, 4, No. 2 (1971): 11.

Debois, Théodore. Traité D'Harmonie: Théorique et Pratique. Réalisations des Basses & Chants du Traté D'Harmonie. Paris: Au Ménestral, Heugel Editeur, 1921.

Derhen, Andrew. "Foss, et al.: Louise Talma Works." Musical America (June 1977): 31.

Emerson, Gordon. "Ms. Talma on Women and Wilder." The New Haven Register, 14 March 1976, p. 1D.

_______. "Compositions by Talma." The New Haven Register, 28 March 1976, p. 14.

Ericson, Raymond. "Celebrating Louise Talma." New York Times, 4 February 1977, sec. C, p. 22.

"Exhibition: Contemporary Women Composers in the United States." Musical America (August 1963): 12.

"For Two Pianos 'Four-Handed Fun'." Musical Courrier, 15 (April 1949): 23.

Frasier, Jane. Women Composers: A Discography. Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, No. 50. Detroit, MI: Information Coordinators, 1983.

Freundlich, Irwin. "Louise Talma: Six Etudes." Notes, 20, No. 4 (1963): 581-582.

"A Gallery of Lifetime Achievers." Music Educators Journal, 66, No. 8 (April 1980): 49.

Goss, Madeleine. Modern Music Makers. NY: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1952.

Hackett, G. D. "Musicians in the Woods." Etude (August 1951): 14-15.

Henahan, Donal. "Music: American Range A Wide Spectrum of Time and Style is Covered by Bicentennial Concert." New York Times, 18 March 1976, p. L51.

_______. "Aviva Players Give Premiere of Quartet." New York Times, 2 March 1978, p.

Holcomb, Dorothy Regina. "Louise Talma." New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. Vol. XVIII. London: Macmillan, 1980.

_______. and Arthur Cohn. "Louise Talma," New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie. Vol. 4. London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1986.

Horowitz, Joseph. "Music of Louise Talma Presented." New York Times, 2 February 1977, p. 33.

Hughes, Allen. "Choral Work Built on Kennedy Words." New York Times, 3 May 1968, p. 52.

Hutton, Edna R. "With the Manuscripts: The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, 1st Performance." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 44, No. 1 (1951): 13.

Kay, Ernest, ed. Two Thousand Women of Achievement. London: Melrose Press, Ltd., 1972.

Jezic, Diane Peacock. Women Composers: The Lost Tradition. New York: The Feminist Press, The City University of New York, 1980.

Kyle, Marguerite Kelly. "With Fraternity Composers." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 43, No. 2 (1950): 147.

_______. "Louise Talma." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 45, No. 1 (1953): 69.

_______. "Amer-Allegro: Premieres, Recent Performances, New Releases." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 56, No. 2 (1964): 82.

_______. "Amer-Allegro: Premieres, Recent Performances, New Releases." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 59, No. 2 (1967): 98.

_______. "Amer-Allegro: Premieres, Recent Performances, New Releases." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 60, No. 2 (1968): 95.

_______. "Amer-Allegro: Premieres, Recent Performances, New Releases." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 67, No. 2 (1975): 75.

_______. "Amer-Allegro: Premieres, Recent Performances, New Releases." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 71, No. 2 (1979): 47.

LePage, Jane Weiner. Women Composers, Conductors and Musicians of the Twentieth Century: Selected Biographies. Vol. 1. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980.

_______. Women Composers, Conductors and Musicians of the Twentieth Century: Selected Biographies. Vol. 2. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1983.

Levy, Marvin D. "League of Composers-I.S.C.M." Musical America (May 1955): 20-21.

Lewinski, Wolf-Eberhard von. "Komponistinnen suchen Anschluss an die Avantgarde." Melos (January 1968): 27.

Livingston, Herbert. "Louise Talma: 'Four-Handed Fun' for Two Pianos." Notes (June 1949): 493-494.

_______. "Pastoral Prelude." Notes (December 1952): 150.

Lockwood, N. "Post Christmas Reflections." Choir Guide (January 1952): 16-17.

Louise Talma Commissioned to Write Composition for Sigma Alpha Iota 75th Anniversary. Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 70, No. 2 (1978): 10.

McClendon-Rose, Helen Jean. "The Piano Sonatas of Louise Talma: A Stylistic Analysis." D.M.A. Dissertation (UMI#9239408), University of Southern Mississippi, 1992. .

Meggett, Joan M. Keyboard Music by Women Composers. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.

Moor, Paul. "Louise Talma's 'The Alcestiad' In Premiere at Frankfurt Opera." New York Times, 2 March 1962, p. 25.

"Nouvelles de la Musique et des musiciens français: USA, Louise Talma." Courrier Musicale de France, No. 28 (1969): 266.

Pendle, Karin. Women and Music: A History. Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Pool, Jeannie G. "America's Women Composers: Up From the Footnotes." Music Educators Journal (January 1979): 34.

_______. Women in History: A Research Guide. Published and distributed by author, 1977.

Reis, Claire. Composers in America. NY: Macmillan, 1947; reprint ed. NY: Da Capo Press, 1977.

Sabin, Robert. "New Piano Pieces in Various Styles." Musical America (January 1949): 32.

_______. "Piano Compositions by Four Americans." Musical America (December 1952): 28.

"A Salute to Women Composers." Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 67, No. 2 (January 1975): 4.

Schaun, George. "Toccata for Orchestra." Baltimore Symphony Program Notes, 20 December 1945, p. 159.

Schubart, Mark A. "Composer's League Offers New Works." The New York Times, 22 January 1945, p. 22.

Schweizer, Gottfried. "Eine 'Alkestiade'." Musica, 16, No. 3 (1962): 156.

"The Singing Greeks" Time, 23 March 1962, p. 54.

Stackhouse, Eunice Wonderly. "A Survey of the Solo Piano Compositions of Louise Talma, Composed 1943-1984." DMA Dissertation (UMI #9540200), University of Kansas, 1995.

Steiner, C. Wesley. "Dialogues for Piano and Orchestra." Buffalo Philharmonic Notes, 12 December 1965, pp. 24-26.

Stevens, Elizabeth Mruk. "The Influence of Nadia Boulanger on Composition in the United States: A Study of Piano Solo Works by Her American Students." D.M.A. Dissertation, Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts, 1975.

Talma, Louise. "Music in Dynamic Progression." Music Clubs Magazine (December 1963): 14-15.

Talma-Wilder 'Alcestiad' Frankfurt Premiere. Pan Pipes of Sigma Alpha Iota, 55, No. 2 (1963).

Teicher, Susan. "The Solo Works for Piano of Louise Talma." DMA Dissertation (UMI#8321626), Peabody Conservatory of Music, Johns Hopkins University, 1983.

Teicher, Susan. "Louise Talma: Essentials of her Style as Seen Through the Piano Works." In The Musical Woman: An International Perspective. Vol. 1. Edited by Judith Lang Zaimont, Catherine Overhauser and Jane Gottlieb. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984

Thomas, Ernst. "Wilder's 'Alkestiade' Als Oper." Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (May 1962): 227-228.

Chronological Biography
Oct. 31, 1906	Born in Arcachon, France
1914 (summer)	Came to New York with mother; father died '07?
1922	Graduated Wadleigh High School
1922-30	Attends the Insitute of Musical Arts (merges with Juilliard, 1946)
	Isaac Newton Seligman Prize for composition
1926-27 (summers)	Attends Fontainebleau/studies piano with Isidore Philipp
1926-28 (winters)	Taught theory and ear training at Manhattan School of Music
1928-1979	Hunter College Music Faculty/wrote two Harmony text books
1928-39 (summers)	Study at Fontainebleau/composition with Boulanger
1936-39 (summers )	Taught solfege at Fontainebleau/1st American to teach there
1931	B.A. New York University
1932	Joseph Bearns Prize for Composition
1933	M.A. Columbia University
1937	Talma arranged Boulanger's 2nd American Tour
1939	Four-Handed Fun
1939	In Principio Erat Verbum
1941	One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted
1943	Carmina Mariana
1943	Piano Sonata #1 Winner of the North American Prize
1944	Toccata for Orchestra
1945	Terre de France
1945	Leap Before You Look
1945	Alleluia in the Form of Toccata
1946	Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Won the Julliard Publication Award forToccata for Orchestra.
1946	Where Thou Goest I Go
1946	Pied Beauty, Spring and Fall
1947	Awarded a second Guggenheim Fellowship. The first woman to receive two Guggenheim Fellowships.
1946-47	Venetian Folly: Overture and Barcarolle
1946-48	The Devine Flame
1946-50	Two Sonnets
1949	Pastoral Prelude
1949 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1950	Bagatelle
1950-51	The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
1951	Song & Dance (for piano & violin)
1951-54	La Corona (Holy Sonnets of John Donne) for voice and piano
1951 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1952	Let's Touch the Sky
1952	Appointed Professor of Music at Hunter College
1953-54	6 Etudes for Piano
1954	String Quartet
1954-55	La Corona
1955	3 Bagatelles for Piano
1944-55	Piano Sonata #2
1955 (summer)	Senior Fulbright Research Grant to Rome
1955-58	The Alcestiad opera/libretto by Thornton Wilder
1955-62	Passacaglia and Fugue
1960	Birthday Song (tenor voice, flute & viola)
1960	Marjorie Peabody Waite Award of the American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters
1961 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1962	Sonata for Vioin and Piano
1963	1st woman awarded the Sibelius Medal for Composition/London
1963-65	All the Days of My Life
1963-64	Dialogues for Piano and Orchestra
1965	7 Songs for Voice and Piano
1966-67	A Time to Remember
1967-68	3 Duologues for Clarinet and Piano
1967-69	The Tolling Bell
1968 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1971 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1972 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1969-73	Summer Sounds for Clarinet and String Quartet
1973	Voices of Peace
1973	Rain Song
1944-74	Soundshots
1974	First woman composer elected to American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters
1974-76	Have You Heard? Do You Know?
1975	Clark Lecturer, Scripps College, Claremont, California
1976 (summer)	Study at Fontainebleau
1976-77	Celebration
1977	Textures
1978	Psalm 84
1978 (summer)	Taught solfege, analysis & harmony/Fontainebleau
1978-79	Diadem
1979	Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
1980	Fellow of the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy
1980	Lament
1981 (summer)	Taught solfege, analysis & harmony/Fontainebleau
1982 (summer)	Taught solfege, analysis & harmony/Fontainebleau
1982	Studies in Spacing
1983	Ambient Air
1983	Honorary doctorate from Hunter College
1984	Kaliedescopic Variations for piano
1984	Honorary doctorate from Bard College
1985	A Wreath of Blessings
1985	Full Circle
1987	7 Episodes for Flute, Piano and Violin
1987	Conversations
1986	Wishing Well
1989	Ave Atque Vale
1989	Give Thanks and Praise
1990	In Praise of a Virtuous Woman
1990	Infanta Marina
1991	Honorary doctorate from St. Mary-of-the-Woods College
1992	Psalm 115
1993	The Lengthening Shadows
1994	Spacings
1996	Died August 13th at Yaddo Artist Colony, Saratoga Springs, NY. She was working on a Song Cycle.
Talma was the first woman to be awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in Music twice. She has been awarded the Bearns Prize for Composition, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission for which Talma wrote All the Days of My Life.

Interview with Louise Talma, January 21st 1995
by Luann Dragone

L.D. First I'd like to start with your study at Fontainebleau. When you were studying composition in France with Nadia Boulanger you mentioned that you had to basically begin to restudy harmony. What were the differences of compositional study in France from that of the United States and for example, which books did you use to study that you hadn't been using here. And I ask this so that I might have a better understanding of your own work.

L.T. Well we used a Harmony text by a man named dubois, but it was mostly for the exercises that it contained which she had us write.

L.D. Those were counterpoint exercises?

L.T. No, they were harmonizing of a given bass either with or without figures and given sopranos. But to these she added many of her own which are not in a book.

L.D. As far as any other composition technique practice, was there anything that you would look at specifically.

L.T. No, she left the choice of that up to us individually..

L.D. Do you think this is completely different or radical from what teachers in the US were doing?

L.T. It was very much stricter in Harmony.

L.D. So you really had to learn harmonic movement and harmonic progression as opposed to ...

L.T. Yes and voice leading.

L.D. And the voice leading principles were based on 18th Century practice?

L.T. They were for her to make the finest musical statement you could with the given material. She didn't some any thing which was simply correct. It had to have beauty.

Who, besides Nadia Boulanger, would you say greatly influenced your compositional style?

L.T. Well I suppose Stravinsky.

L.D. I ask because it seems like after when you began writing serial music your style at that point was really different from his.

L.T. Yes but at the beginning it was straight neo-classical and then a conversation with Irving Fine, not so much a conversation, I heard his string quartet which was the first serial piece I heard which I thought was very fine. I wrote to him and sent him a set of questions which he answered meticulously and so I began to put that into practice.

L.D. When he was writing, (I'm not familiar with his work) I'm wondering, did he also mix tonal elements in his serial writing or was his serial writing very strict.

L.T. Well it was strict, but the choice was so fine that it made for me, musical sense which straight serial writing did not, or rather twelve-tone writing was very mechanical.

L.D. Do you see your compositional style periods as two or three periods?

L.T. I would say three because after I wrote quite a number of things including my opera, a three-act opera in Serial technique, I began more and more to relax that ...

L.D. ...relax the strictness of using the row.

L.T. yes.

L.D. So, you would say that up to around your 6 Etudes for Piano, and your String Quartet...

L.T. No, those were strict.

L.D. then after the opera in the sixties, you would say that would be your third period.

L.T. Yes or maybe a little later it's getting more and more so, it's getting more and more simple.

L.D. What about the earliest works, I have never heard them or seen them I have only read about them. I'm talking about Three Madrigals, La Belle Dame sans Merci, and the 5 Sonnets from the Portuguese. Do you consider these a part of your first period? I have never heard them so I don't know where they belong.

L.T. Well, it's a question of date. Every thing before 1954 or so ...

L.D. you would put into a First period of neoclassical works.

L.T. I can send you a curriculum vita which has all the works listed.

L.D. Oh really, yes I'd like that very much.

L.T. Well would you send me in writing you name address and phone number.

L.D. Yes I will. I was wondering if you would talk a little bit about your compositional process, for example, how much precompositional thinking and planning do you do for a piece?

L.T. Oh I couldn't possibly answer that because that a question of the moment.

L.D. Do you work with a sketch book?

L.T. Not really but if I get an idea when I'm walking around somewhere I put down something and maybe refer to it.

L.D. But say in terms of a real planned sketch book that you keep over the years, there's nothing like that?

L.T. No. Gray papers.

L.D. Have some works meant more to you, or more greatly represented a period of your life?

L.T. Oh you can't ask that because the latest work or the one you are working on is always the one that you are most involved in.

L.D. How much revision work do you do if any?

L.T. None. Once it's done it's put away and I don't even remember it.

L.D. Oh, that's really unlike Stravinsky. It seems like he really revised his work a lot for whatever his purposes...

L.T. Well, mostly for editorial purposes, he wasn't getting paid for the things which were brought out before that. Various small changes so that he could claim the copyright.

L.D. I would like to talk about 13 Ways of Looking at A Blackbird because that is actually, one of the pieces that I do want to use in my dissertation.

L.T. That was written because Paul Sperry commissioned it as a graduation present for his niece (Jennifer Sperry) and so that's how that came to be written. I can't remember if he chose the poem or if he simply said this is what I'd like to be written.

L.D. So it was through his asking that you chose that poem because I was wondering, since you wrote the songs based on the 9 poems of Wallace Stevens, if you felt at all akin to his philosophy.

L.T. I don't choose things for their philosophy, I choose it for what appeals to me as the sound.

L.D. So you've never spoken o Wallace Stevens?

L.T. No.

L.D. It just so happens that 13 Ways of Looking at A Blackbird is one of his more famous works.

L.T. Oh yea it is, as a matter of fact at one point, Lukas Foss had an idea to have a concert that contained only settings of that poem because there were so many, one could make a whole program out of them, but he never did.

L.D. I wonder if we could talk about the opera a little bit.

L.T. Well, that was on the request of Thornton Wilder and it took him a year for him to persuade me that he really meant it because I was not at all the kind of person who went for opera or thought that I had anything that I could do with an operatic libretto, but he was interested because he had written a stage work which was called the Alcestiad which was done in Edinborough and he wanted to find out the difference between writing a full stage work and writing a libretto so he wanted to take that particular piece and cut it down to libretto size. Well, he missed the boat by a great deal at the beginning because when he sent me what he thought was the libretto I set the first ten minutes of the piece and it was obvious that there were far too many words. And so he had to correct it for that and so once we had a time schedule, oh, I forget exactly what it is; 1:50 for the first act, 1 for the second act and, I don't know, 30 minutes for the third, he had a measure by which he could see how much he could put into that particular scene.

L.D. I see, so in fact that is something which I was interested in, because after the Alcestiad, when he when Hindemith was writing "The Long Christmas Dinner" (1960)...

L.T. No, I think it was before or simultaneous. But of course that was a very short work so it really doesn't count (she laughs).

L.D. Well he was in frequent in correspondence with Hindemidth, as a matter of fact, Hindemith collaborated on the libretto so in fact you really did collaborate on the libretto because you told him there were too many words. I take that as a collaboration, do you?

L.T. No, I never had anything to do with the words and he never changed one thing which I submitted to him. We would meet in various places in the world every so often and I would play for him, whatever, and sing whatever I had written in the interim and he was always very pleased with whatever I presented to him and never asked for a change.

L.D. So do you feel like your aesthetic values were similar to Wilders?

L.T. Oh yes. Very much so.

L.D. And so, besides the fact that there were too many words in the libretto at the outset, basically everything else was in coordination after that. I've read the criticism for the Frankfurt production and it seems as if the audience was very happy with what they heard. How did you feel about the opera and how did Thornton Wilder feel about it?

L.T. Oh it was wonderful because we had very good principal people like Inga Borg for Alcestis, you couldn't ask for better than that all of them were very fine.

L.D. Were you surprised by the really good outcome of this since it was your first opera?

L.T. Well I was absolutely stunned to think that it would be done at one of the very great opera houses of Europe. Nobody had had a 3-act opera done before in Frankfurt or in Germany for that matter. I mean, Ethel Smythe had something done but that was something else.

L.D. Was it good or bad?

L.T. The Smythe's work? I don't know, I never heard it.

L.D. Oh, because I'm not familiar with it either. Now, has the opera been performed here in the United States?

L.T. No for one very good reason indeed It's too expensive. You see in Germany, and in Europe in general, it's the director of the opera house that decides whether something is going to be done or not and he has all the forces he needs at hand because it's a year-round business. Whereas here it has to go through committee after committee and while quite a number of places including Chicago have expressed the desired to do it, they always come up with that stumbling block of it's too expensive to do it. You know there are 13 principles, a big orchestra, a big, chorus, a big dance group. So.

L.D. Actually that's part of my theory as to why so many 20th century opera composers wrote 1-act opera..

L.T. ...yes, or operas with very few characters.

L.D. Exactly, it's really a shame.

L.T. Well yes, we don't have the European system , a permanent place.

L.D. I think that's about it.

For further information, or to join the Louise Talma Society, send e-mail to:
LuannDragone@ATT.NET