Adam Guettel
NEW RELEASE!
Light in the Piazza!
I am the fall from Pegasus,
I am the lost Leander in the tide.
I am cold, alone and set apart,
And I am warm as Hero's heart.
--Hymns and Myths: The Return
I am far from being an expert on Guettel's music--in fact, I've only heard his "Hymns and Myths" cd, which was based on the concert "Saturn Returns" (1998).
"The whole show is framed by the song "Saturn Returns," which is about the flight from the self. The song says 'I want something--I don't know what it is....I feel vaguely that I had it a long time ago, but I don't remember what it is and I want it really badly.' The myths and hymns serve as attempts to reach for what is missing--the myths are our behaviors and the hymns are our prayers. At the end of the show is the "Saturn Returns" reprise, "The Return", in which the protanganist says: 'I am all of these things that we've just sung about and seen.' There's a sort of sunlit moment, a moment of self acceptance." Adam Guettel, quoted in Showbill, April 1998