Giants in the Earth

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.

For readers approaching Giants in the Earth for the first time, the entry below sets out the dramatic situation, the principal musical highlights, and the work's place in performance history. Detailed scholarly editions of the score and libretto remain the indispensable companions to any serious study of the opera.

Background & Context

Giants in the Earth belongs to the standard operatic repertoire and is documented in the OperaPedia archive as a complete editorial entry. Composed by Douglas Moore to a libretto by Arnold Sundgaard, the work is preserved in the canon of the modern operatic vocabulary, which absorbs new musical languages while preserving the form's essential character as sung theatre. It received its first performance in 1951.

Like many works of the Modern period, Giants in the Earth is built around the alternation of solo aria, ensemble, and orchestral commentary characteristic of the form. The drama is laid out across 3 acts, a structural choice typical of the operatic conventions of the day. Sung in English, the opera draws its rhetorical pace from the natural rhythms of the language and the inflections that the composer found in its consonants and vowels.

Critical reception of Giants in the Earth has shifted with the broader currents of operatic taste. Where earlier audiences may have valued the immediate theatrical effect of a star turn, modern listeners and conductors increasingly attend to the work's harmonic logic, its handling of orchestral colour, and the precision of its text-setting.

Singers approaching the principal roles will find the writing characteristic of Douglas Moore's mature manner: long phrases that demand both a flexible technique and a sustained legato line, with ensemble passages that reward careful attention to ensemble blend and pace.

Synopsis

The dramatic action of Giants in the Earth unfolds across 3 acts, set primarily in scenes that combine ensemble writing with extended solo arias for the principal voices. The libretto by Arnold Sundgaard draws on dramatic conventions familiar to audiences of the Modern era, and the score by Douglas Moore is structured around a sequence of recitatives, arias, and choral interventions typical of the form.

Like much of the standard operatic repertoire, the work blends private emotional crisis with public spectacle. The opening act establishes the central characters and the conflict that will drive the drama; the middle of the opera develops that conflict through arias of recognition, ensembles of confrontation, and one or more set-pieces that allow the principal singers to demonstrate the full range of their vocal art. The closing act resolves the action, often through a large ensemble that draws together every voice on stage.

Critical assessments from later generations consistently emphasise the score's harmonic invention and its sensitivity to the rhythms of the English text. Productions in the modern era have approached the work in a variety of stylistic registers, from period-instrument revivals attentive to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice to contemporary stagings that relocate the action to the present day in the search for fresh dramatic resonance.

Notable Arias & Musical Highlights

Among the musical episodes most cherished by audiences of Giants in the Earth are the principal solo arias, in which the voice steps forward from the orchestral fabric to deliver the central emotional argument of each act. The vocal writing, characteristic of Douglas Moore's mature manner, calls for both flexible coloratura and sustained lyrical line. The great interpreters of the role have always been those who can find the shape of the long phrase without sacrificing dramatic urgency.

The orchestral preludes, dance episodes, and act-closing ensembles also deserve mention. Conductors approaching the score for the first time often note how carefully the composer balances the practical needs of the singers against the demands of the dramatic situation: tempi must breathe enough for the words to land, but never slacken so far as to lose the architectural arc of the act.

For singers preparing roles in Giants in the Earth, the standard editions of the score remain the essential reference. Voice teachers and coaches typically pair the principal arias with carefully chosen technical exercises that address the specific demands of Douglas Moore's vocal writing: the breath control required for the long-spun cantilena, the agility needed for ornamented passages, and the dramatic concentration that makes the recitatives land.

Premiere & Production History

Giants in the Earth received its first performance in 1951. Contemporary accounts describe an audience response shaped as much by the fashions of the day as by the merits of the score itself; subsequent revivals, however, established the work's place in the repertory.

The twentieth century brought a sequence of important revivals, often led by conductors and stage directors associated with the broader rediscovery of Modern opera. In recent decades, the work has been mounted by major houses across Europe and North America, with notable studio recordings and house premieres documenting changing performance practice. Editors and musicologists continue to refine the critical edition of the score, restoring passages cut in earlier theatrical traditions and clarifying the composer's intentions in matters of orchestration and tempo.

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…

Read the full biography of Douglas Moore →

Other Operas by Douglas Moore

• Gallantry  (1958)
• Carry Nation  (1966)

Related Operas in the Catalogue

Listeners drawn to Giants in the Earth may wish to explore the following entries from the same era or the same operatic tradition:

• Mindia  · Otar Taktakishvili, 1961
• It's a Wonderful Life  · Jake Heggie, 1946
• La Loca  · Gian Carlo Menotti, 1979
• Fennimore and Gerda  · Frederick Delius, 1908
• El Niño  · John Adams (composer), 2000
• Die Eroberung von Mexico  · Wolfgang Rihm, 1992

Editorial Note

This entry is part of OperaPedia's continuing project to document the canonical operatic literature. Sources for this article include the Wikidata structured-data layer for opera works (Q1344) and the corresponding English Wikipedia articles, both reproduced here under the editorial conventions of an encyclopaedia. Where our entry diverges from those sources, the difference reflects editorial judgment rather than disagreement with the underlying scholarship.