Mantle of the Prophet

This is an opera I have been planning since 1966. I started composing it in late 2018 and finished in 2020 - 2.5 years total - a second Mission, as it were (my first, 1967-69, was also 2.5 years).

In 1960 Clinton F. Larson - the LDS Shakespeare - published his play "The Mantle of the Prophet" in the Spring issue of the BYU Quarterly magazine. Brother Larson was then a Professor in the BYU English department and was already a renowned poet.

I attended BYU in Fall semester 1966. In March 1967 I began a 2.5 year LDS mission to the Southern Far East, serving in T'ai Wan (Republic of China) and Hong Kong (then a British Crown Colony) before returning to BYU in Sep 1969.

BYU performed a revised version of Brother Larson's play in Spring semester 1966 (I did not, unfortunately, see it). Deseret Books in the summer of 1966 published a book "The Mantle of the Prophet and Other Plays" with 5 of his plays. I bought the book and was instantly charmed by his poetry. I decided then that "Mantle of the Prophet" MUST be an opera, and that I must write it.

After my mission I was fortunate to take a class on Writing Poetry taught by Brother Larson (Fall 1971) and learned some of his art from submitting a poetry play of my own in his class. (Of course I did not tell him my plan for an opera on his play - at that time I had no music to show him, so could not then justify my desired project - not sure how he might have reacted to the idea.)

Brother Larson died in 1994 and his wife died in 2010. He had 2 daughters and several grandchildren, but I have not yet been able to contact them.

I contacted Deseret Books in Dec 2017 to ask permission to use the text of their book - but they replied that they never published other editions than the one in 1966, their copyright had lapsed, and they no longer had any rights to the text of his play.

For many years I prepared for the task of this opera by writing other music (much of it posted on this web site) until I believed I was ready for my magnum opus.

I prepared the libretto by combining the text of both versions of Brother Larson's play (Spring 1960 and Summer 1966), then culled lines and characters to result in a shorter libretto for my opera.

I arranged the libretto in numbered sections for ease of use while composing the opera. I decided to write sections as I felt prompted to, that is, NOT from start-to-finish but in a different order.

I changed none of the text, save to shorten it - with (to date) 3 exceptions, which are in bold in the file below.

(a) I added section 2-6 as an interlude, where Church members carrying Joseph's coffin sing my arrangement of the LDS hymn "The Time Is Far Spent".

(b and c) In Brother Larson's play, in Act 3 Brigham at one point speaks 'in the form and voice of Joseph' as recorded by many Church member witnesses in their journals. I have no idea how the BYU cast accomplished that when they staged the play in Spring 1966. So I decided to stage it differently. In my opera Joseph is a Tenor and Brigham is a Baritone. In Act 1 section 1-3 the last thing Joseph sings are the lines "My people, I know your feelings; my people, I know" as he moves offstage. In Act 3 section 3-5 Joseph, offstage, sings the first line, then moves onstage singing the second line. He wears a white suit like Temple workers use, and moves behind and to the right of Brigham, then they sing a Duet, while Brigham never sees Joseph in this section. That is how I decided to portray Brigham's "transformation" as he speaks to the Church.

The idea in 3-11 of having the Church members sustain Brigham the way I portray them is one of my earliest ideas for this opera.

The chorus in 3-13 by Chuch members after sustaining Brigham is the first music I wrote for this opera, as a "test" to see if I could really do this project.

I wrote 1-0 "Fantasia on 5 LDS Hymns" using hymns about Latter-Day prophets as the first "overture" for the opera (I called it a "Fantasia" because I did not follow any of the "standard" forms, such as Sonata-Allegro, for it). Later I wrote 1-1 as the real Overture for the opera - however it does not use the traditional method of playing themes from the opera, but instead uses an LDS hymn (a variation of the opening measures) for its main theme.

The libretto file is below plus 2 other documents with a summary of sections, plus suggestions for 2 shorter versions of the opera (complete version is 6.5 hours long).