matthew triplett

(2014) I Promise to be Good

Elizabeth Halliday (left) as Rimbaud and Meghan Ihnen (right) as Verlaine in Rhymes With Opera's 2015 production of I Promise to Be Good
Elisabeth Halliday (left) as Rimbaud and Megan Ihnen (right) as Verlaine in Rhymes With Opera’s 2015 production of I Promise to be Good

About

I Promise to be Good (2014),
for violin, cello, saxophone, and two sopranos (15′) [premiered August 18, 2014]

Composed as part of the 2014 Baltimore Rhymes with Opera new chamber music workshop.

Program Note

I Promise to be Good is a setting of two letters exchanged between the Symbolist poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud during the summer of 1873. The letters mark a critical juncture in their relationship: Verlaine, infuriated by a caustic remark that Rimbaud made in jest, has fled the city of London by boat to Brussels. As Verlaine contemplates suicide on the boat, Rimbaud remains penniless in London, unsure whether to wait for his lover’s return or to pursue him.

As much a work about loss as love, I Promise to be Good attempts—in much the same way as Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse—to elide the experience of mourning with that of desire.  I Promise to be Good was written as part of the 2014 Rhymes With Opera New Chamber Music Workshop in Baltimore, Maryland.