In 1955, while in the midst of working on a musical version of Voltaire's CANDIDE with the distinguished American playwright Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein wrote these a cappella choruses as incidental music for the play THE LARK, adapted by Miss Hellman from the original French version by Jean Anouilh. Since the drama is about the trial of Joan of Arc, Mr. Bernstein's music is deliberately evocative of that great Saint's medieval era. The initial presentation of the play took place on October 28, 1955 at the Plymouth Theater in Boston, with a cast that included Julie Harris, Boris Karloff, Christopher Plummer and Theodore Bikel. |
