Gentle Jesus join my journey
When I lay me down to sleep.
I would gladly sleep forever
In your kind companionship.
Sweet Redeemer walk beside me
Guide my dreaming by your grace
Help my mind make pictures of you
Let my fingers feel your face.
Should I live to see the moment
When the convict sun is freed
Let me not forget your kindness
Let me not forget my need.
Speaker of the House….
https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-sexual-abuse-illinois-dennis-hastert-99160a4428db66e86da8e275e57c8ec7
Wigs on the green anon, wigs on the green.
from Denmark
Online: Tobias Picker’s opera about ‘the Danish girl’ trans patient Lili Elbe
' "Lili Elbe, the new opera in two acts by American composer Tobias Picker, with a libretto by his husband Aryeh Lev Stollman (they were married by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg), had its world premiere on October 22, 2023, at Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland. The entire production was filmed for worldwide audiences and can now be seen either on YouTube or on OperaVision (available through June 8, 2024)."
The actress Anna Larsen of the Royal Danish Theater has just premiered the role of Orpheus in a new play. The story of the lovestricken poet who loses his bride Eurydice is eerily resonant with Gerda and Lili. Gerda is painting her portrait, but unable to come for her last sitting, which will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition, Anna suggests that Gerda ask her husband Einar to assume her pose. It is then that Einar makes a profound self-discovery, never before acknowledged, though hinted at by recollections of a sensitive childhood. Like Orpheus compelled to look back at Eurydice, Lili in her new sense of identity can never again help turning away from her true self, even to the shock and embarrassment of their friends and family.
Lili decides to follow up on an introduction to Professor Warnekros, who agrees to work with her at the Municipal Women’s Clinic in Dresden and help her fully live her life as a woman after a series of operations. Warnekros has his own agenda, hoping to win a Nobel Prize for his pioneering medical work.
After her first surgery, Lili has a dramatic encounter with the King of Denmark and receives a royal decree confirming her gender identity, thus legally dissolving her marriage to Gerda, since same-gender marriage was unheard of at the time. As a pioneer of gender-affirmation surgery, Lili endures the terrible pains and dangers of the limited medical science of her day, ultimately dying from complications after a subsequent surgery intended to place female reproductive organs in her body.
With their marriage annulled, though their mutual love remains undiminished, both Lili and Gerda find partnership elsewhere, Lili with the Parisian perfumier Claude LeJeune, and Gerda with the Italian Major Fernando Porta, a cad who will squander her money and leave her in poverty. At the end of the opera, Lili and Gerda declare their great and everlasting love for each other, Lili’s death a kind of apotheosis, having finally become the woman she yearned to be.
The opera is given a stunning production, directed by Krystian Lada, who also designed imaginative 1920s Art Deco décor for the stage, costumes by Bente Rolandsdotter, and lighting by Alexandr Prowalinski. Conductor Modestas Pitrenas leads the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra. The running time is 135 minutes.
The two principal roles of Lili and Gerda are performed, respectively, by trans baritone Lucia Lucas and Sylvia D’Eramo. Other roles include the actress Anna Larsen, various friends and family members, nurses, other patients at the clinic, chorus members, and Dr. Warnekros (bass Msimelelo Mbali).
Owing to its topicality, Lili Elbe must be deemed a true 21st-century opera. Its musical language is contemporary, expressive, often reminiscent both of the Jazz Age and the popular operetta genre of its time, and intensely, personally transcendent.
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/online-tobias-pickers-opera-about-the-danish-girl-trans-patient-lili-elbe/
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