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Gerald Barry: La Plus Forte (Canadian première)

Gerald Barry composed La Plus Forte, an opera in one act, in 2006. The work runs approximately 21 minutes in performance, and is scored for solo soprano, 3 flutes, piccolo, alto flute, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, and orchestral strings.

Gerald Barry writes about La Plus Forte:

August Strindberg wrote La Plus Forte (“The Stronger”) in December 1888 - January 1889, as part of the repertoire for his Experimental Theatre in Copenhagen. Like all his plays it is based on fact. Since his marriage to the actress Siri von Essen, he had had various flirtations with other women. The part of Madame X appears to be based mainly on his wife Siri, and that of Mademoiselle Y (Amelie, a non-speaking role) on the actress Helga Frankenfeldt, who Strindberg had given up seeing in 1882 after she had insulted Siri at a party.

In La Plus Forte, a traumatic encounter between the two women takes place in a café on Christmas Eve. Madame X, friendly and wary at the beginning, gradually becomes vulnerable and then violent as it dawns on her that Mademoiselle Y had possibly had an affair with her husband. To her horror, she realizes that this was why her husband had chosen the name Eskil for their son (it was Mademoiselle Y's father's name) and had chosen for her certain colours, authors, food, drink, because these were the favourites of Mademoiselle Y. She feels possessed and is filled with loathing. But in the end she says that she is the stronger because she did not run away, she stayed, but that Mademoiselle Y is now alone, and bitter. "Thank you for teaching my husband to love! Now I am going home, to love him."

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Programme Note by Gerald Barry

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