Giants in the Earth
Music by Douglas Moore · libretto by Arnold Sundgaard · premiered 1951
Giants in the Earth is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera in three acts and four scenes by composer Douglas Moore. The work uses an English libretto by Arnold Sundgaard after Ole Edvart Rølvaag's 1924-5 novel of the same name. The idea for the opera was originally conceived by Sundgaard, and depicts a story of tragedy and romance among Norwegian American settlers of Dakota Territory in 1873. Composed during 1948-1949, the work was premiered on March 28, 1951 at Columbia University's Brander Matthews Theatre by the Columbia Opera Workshop. The Pulitzer jury concluded: "In no opera by an American is there music of such freshness, beauty, and distinctive character. The music has a life of its own apart from its appositeness to the text... Subject, text, and music avoid the cliché and commonplace and combine for an impression of strength and sincerity." Moore's compositional style is highly vocal and features a speech-like, through-composed, "lack of melodic repetition," with a, "fluidity and natural feel [to] the vocal lines." Contrastingly, the lack of character development and liveliness, the almost complete lack of attention grabbing motifs, the length, and the premiere performance have all been criticized. Olin Downes of The New York Times wrote that the opera was mostly, "recitative of little inherent significance." The premiere cast included soprano Brenda Miller Cooper as the central figure Beret, along with Josh Wheeler, Roy Johnson, Vivian Bauer, Sam Bertsche, Helen Dautrich, James Cosenza, Frances Paige, Raymond Sharp, and Edward Black. In 1963 Moore improved the orchestration and depiction of Beret at the request of Carl Fischer Music. The runners up for the Pulitzer that year were Quincy Porter's String Quartet No. 8, Peter Mennin's Symphony No. 5, and David Diamond's Symphony No. 3. Despite its acclaim, in the decades since first being written Giants in the Earth has scarcely been performed live and no recordings of the opera are accessible to the public. Following a major donation from Dean and Rosemarie Buntrock, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra produced the opera in Sioux Falls in 2025.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Giants in the Earth (opera)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Douglas Stuart Moore (August 10, 1893 – July 25, 1969) was an American composer, songwriter, organist, pianist, conductor, educator, actor, and author. A composer who mainly wrote works with an American subject, his music is generally characterized by lyricism in a popular or conservative style which generally eschewed the more experimental progressive trends of musical modernism. Composer Virgil Thomson described Moore as a neoromantic composer who was influenced by American folk music. While several of his works enjoyed popularity during his lifetime, only his folk opera The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) has remained well known into the 21st century. Moore first created music while a student…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Douglas Moore", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Douglas Moore
- Gallantry (1958)
- Carry Nation (1966)