for baritone and piano (2005)
text by Ross Baglin
score available from
Wise Music
program note
i. White Boats Crossing
ii. Battle of the Nile
iii. St. Paul’s
iv. Waiting for the French
v. Half Empty Towns
vi. Trafalgar
In October 2005 it was two centuries since Horatio Nelson died while commanding the British Fleet off Cape Trafalgar. Throughout most of that time Nelson’s victories and his heroic death were smoothly assimilated within Britain’s twin vision of itself as imperial power, and plucky, often-isolated defender of liberty.
Nelson’s story is almost archetypically ‘operatic’ in the old sense – it has passion, the horror of war, political intrigues, gross betrayal and heroic death set in a time of sweeping historical change. He was a man who espoused duty as the highest of values, yet abandoned a faithful wife for Emma Hamilton; a man who showed sympathy to the wretched, yet orchestrated a terrible political massacre of civilians in Naples; whose life was devoted to the sea though it often tortured him physically and mentally. And standing upon these stark psychological fissures, we have the man of precarious vanity, charisma, and thirst for personal danger and oblivion.
Ross Baglin
Nelson, an opera in 3 acts, was completed in 2005 (libretto by Ross Baglin). This suite of 6 arias was assembled in 2015. All but one are sung by the opera’s title figure, Horatio Nelson (the exception being Half Empty Towns, sung by Hardy). The premiere of this selection was given by Michael Lampard and Konrad Olszewski at 45 Downstairs, Melbourne on 20 March 2024.
Stuart Greenbaum