The Voice of the Rain (2021)

Instrumentation: Soprano and Piano

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Duration: 5 minutes 30 seconds

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Text: 

The Voice of the Rain by Walt Whitman

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And who art thou? Said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,

Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed,

and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,

And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;

And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,

and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)

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Premiere: Victoria Benson and Markus Kaitila | July 21 2021 | Fresh Squeezed Opera Workshop | Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn, NY |