NIGHTS NOT SPENT ALONE

Where does one start when combining four separate song cycles into a single, unified piece of drama? There is not the conventional, linear plot structure which will hold an audience’s sustained investment in the protagonist’s core conflict, through a turning point, up to a climax and safely into the final denouement. So where to start? The voice. 

Each cycle is for a mezzo-soprano voice and all share common recurring themes and imagery: lost loves and sleepless nights trouble the narrative voice throughout. Insomnia becomes the antagonist, and the obvious setting of this woman’s bedroom becomes the arena in which this inner battle is fought. It is a conflicting space which represents privacy and solitude while also emphasising her loneliness. Insomnia is an entrapping and confronting experience where thoughts that one can ignore in the sunshine and business of the daytime, lie waiting in the silence and darkness. Also present is the disorientating nature of a sleepless night: there are moments when we could believe she has slipped into an unsettled dream-state and this has offered a vaguely ‘Alice in Wonderland’ parallel to the character’s journey - as if Alice were going through her Wonderland experience again but as a young woman of the Millennial generation.  

While this provides a rich setting, it is not yet a structure that will take both protagonist and audience on a journey. Musically and narratively, ‘Five Am’rous Sighs’ is the most conflicted and uncertain cycle, and thus the best way to reveal what keeps her awake. With the episodic nature of song cycles - each containing several movements - we are not following a single conflict that the protagonist needs to resolve, rather we are observing a character who is struggling to deal with the many thoughts and memories that are compounding her insecurities. Thus, we are not witnessing her battle to resolve any particular external issue that we can follow, but to observe how she will ultimately find enough psychological peace to allow sleep. The eleventh movement of ‘All You Who Sleep Tonight’ - ‘Voices’ - provides us with a turning point in the drama when the protagonist finally steps back to criticise external voices that have instructed her how to live, and instead connects with her own stifled voice which cries out for peace. Aristotle said that the ending of a story should be ‘surprising yet inevitable’. It is inevitable that this drama can only end once she finds a way to sleep, yet as more and more thoughts torment her, it is hard to see how this is possible. 'Nights Not Spent Alone’ is the final cycle in our drama where the narrative voice finally finds strength to embrace and relive difficult memories. The final movement is a sonnet in which the last six lines find a resolve and a realisation that the difficulties she has tried to ignore are what make her life colourful and what make her strong now. With that greater sense of completeness, she can sleep.