Under Milk Wood

Libretto based on the play by Dylan Thomas; German text by Erich Fried (E,G)

colS,3lyrS,2M,A,T,lyrT,heldenT,2buffoT,5Bar,BBar,B,2buffoB,speaking roles,mimes; chorus; children’s chorus; taped voices; ballet;
2(II=picc,afl).2.corA.2(II=bcl).asax.2-4.3.3.1-timp.perc-2harps-org-accordion-elec.gtr-strings-tape;
On-stage:asax-pft-accordion-elec.gtr-drums-db

A day and a night in the Welsh fishing village Llareggub

A play, an impression for voices, an entertainment from obscurity – a play about the small town where I live, just simple and warm and comic, with much movement and changing moods so that in varied ways, through images and language, descriptions and dialogue, evocation and parody, one gradually comes to know the town as if one lived there oneself... All the cranks, whose eccentricities are briefly sketched impressionistically, they are all in their way normal and good people; the narrator (compere and chronicler, sort of conscience, a guardian angel) and the poet-priest do not judge, nor condemn – they only explain and make everything strangely simple and simply strange.


Dylan Thomas

Comic, Poetic