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Tokaido Road: A Journey After Hiroshige
Contributor(s): Gaffield, Nancy (Author), Lefanu, Nicola (Composer)
ISBN: 1848613784     ISBN-13: 9781848613782
Publisher: Shearsman Books
OUR PRICE:   $10.40  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: June 2014
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Music | Lyrics
- Drama | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Drama | Women Authors
Dewey: 782.102
Physical Information: 0.09" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.13 lbs) 36 pages
Themes:
- Sex & Gender - Feminine
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
This is Nancy Gaffield's libretto, based on her 2011 poetry collection of the same name, for Nicola LeFanu's chamber opera (2014). In 1832 the young Hiroshige sets out on Japan's great Eastern Sea Road, the Tokaido, linking Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. The paintings he creates along the way reveal the secrets of a hidden country. As the young artist, Hiro savours all his adventures-not least the amorous ones-and his paintings bring to life everyone he meets: old men and beautiful women, samurai and geisha, pilgrims, porters and passers-by. Hiroshige in old age is present in the opera too, reflecting on what had gripped his imagination twenty-five years earlier. Behind every welcoming tea-house ('station') on the Tokaido, there was another story: poverty, persecution, famine. Hiroshige braved the government censor by publishing prints that show the horror of death through starvation. His work reminds us of the power of art to bear witness.