Life Is a Dream

Life is a Dream is a three-act opera with music by Lewis Spratlan from an English-language libretto by James Maraniss which was based on the 1635 play Life Is a Dream by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. It was written in the 1970s, but did not receive a complete stage premiere until 2010. Spratlan's collaboration with his librettist began in the 1970s while the two were friends and colleagues at Amherst College where Spratlan was a professor of music for 36 years and Maraniss was a professor of Spanish who greatly admired Calderon's play. Spratlan wrote the opera between 1975 and 1978 on a commission from the New Haven Opera Theatre, a company which closed in 1977. Spratlan's efforts to interest another company in staging the work failed until, in January 2000, he raised funds to finance two concert performances of the opera's second act–"the second act is where most of the drama of the piece goes on," said the composer–by the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, one at Amherst College and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard's Paine Hall, where the Boston Globe reviewer greeted it as "a strong piece that would prove compelling in a full production." "The concert," said a later report, "required a forty-six-piece orchestra, six singers and a chorus. A combined recording of both performances was made. Spratlan submitted it to the Pulitzer Prize Board in March 2000, and to most everyone's surprise–especially Spratlan's–it won." The Pulitzer citation noted that Spratlan had "created a theatrical world in which the characters were given distinct musical thumbprints that were meant to embody their personalities, and in which the dissonances and angularities of contemporary styles were linked with traditional dance, march and madrigal forms." In May 2002, New York City Opera presented another concert performance of the second act. There was still no interest in staging the work until early 2009 when Santa Fe Opera's General Director Charles MacKay approached Spratlan to propose a 2010 staging. The opera was given its world premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on 24 July 2010. John Cheek, who had appeared in the 2000 concerts, appeared in the premiere as well. Spratlan has described the musical style he employed as "'pan-tonal,' that is, mostly centered in certain keys or modes but fluid in moving among them" except for the use of 12-tone technique to represent the rigidity of the character of Don Basilio. Each character is further differentiated:

The vocal style I think of as heightened speech, following closely the rhythms and contours of the text. Each character has a vocal "thumbprint." For some examples, the hero's music soars upward, only to fall a bit and resume its climb — Sisyphus pushing the bolder uphill. The king's music is marked by wide leaps, conveying pomposity and exaggeration. The music of Clarín, the jester, is staccato and very narrow in range; he is always announced and accompanied by the piccolo trumpet, a descendant of the namesake Baroque-era clarino. The opera's orchestration is many-hued and actively conveys the psychological environment at hand.

For readers approaching Life Is a Dream 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

Life Is a Dream belongs to the standard operatic repertoire and is documented in the OperaPedia archive as a complete editorial entry. Composed by Lewis Spratlan to a libretto by James Maraniss which was, the work is preserved in the canon of the rich Baroque tradition of declamatory recitative and ornamented da capo aria. It received its first performance in 1635 at Santa Fe Opera.

Like many works of the Baroque period, Life Is a Dream is built around the alternation of solo aria, ensemble, and orchestral commentary characteristic of the form. 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 Life Is a Dream 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 Lewis Spratlan'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 Life Is a Dream unfolds across multiple acts, set primarily in scenes that combine ensemble writing with extended solo arias for the principal voices. The libretto by James Maraniss which was draws on dramatic conventions familiar to audiences of the Baroque era, and the score by Lewis Spratlan 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 Life Is a Dream 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 Lewis Spratlan'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 Life Is a Dream, 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 Lewis Spratlan'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

Life Is a Dream received its first performance in 1635 at Santa Fe Opera. 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 Baroque 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

Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. (September 5, 1940 – February 9, 2023) was an American music academic and composer of contemporary classical music.

Read the full biography of Lewis Spratlan →

Related Operas in the Catalogue

Listeners drawn to Life Is a Dream may wish to explore the following entries from the same era or the same operatic tradition:

• Cabildo  · Amy Beach, 1932
• Carlo re d'Allemagna  · Alessandro Scarlatti, 1716
• Didone abbandonata  · Unknown composer, 1724
• Deidamia  · George Frideric Handel, 1741
• Esmeralda  · Arthur Goring Thomas, 1831
• 27  · Ricky Ian Gordon, 2014

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.