''Blooms of Dublin'' is a musical play or

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...

in two acts with music and text by Anthony Burgess. The work, nearly three hours long, was first performed (in a concert version) for the Dublin Joyce Centenary in 1982 by the RTE Singers and RTE Concert Orchestra and broadcast on

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

and RTE radio. It was produced by John Tydeman and Michael Heffernan. The operetta is based on

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's 1922 novel ''

Ulysses Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature. Ulysses may also refer to: People * Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name Places in the United States * Ulysses, Kansas * Ulysse ...

''. It was published in book form in 1986. The texts of some of the songs also appear in the novels ''

Earthly Powers ''Earthly Powers'' is a panoramic saga novel of the 20th century by Anthony Burgess first published in 1980. It begins with the "outrageously provocative" first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with ...

'' (1980) and ''The End of World News'' (1982). Burgess provides a very free interpretation of Joyce’s text, with his own changes and interpolations, all set to original music that blends opera with

Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...

and music hall styles. The number “Copulation without population” in Act Two is an example – it’s set in the style of a humorous, bawdy music hall romp and features a chorus of drunks and prostitutes - but it has little to do with the corresponding passage from ''Ulysses''. Burgess said that his aim was to make ''Ulysses'' more accessible. “The score is, I think, the kind of thing Joyce might have envisaged…he was the great master of the ordinary, and my music is ordinary enough. I had felt for some time that he might have had demotic musicals in mind ….”. The piece received mixed reviews. Hans Keller called it "a pathetic pastiche" in which "senseless tonal and rhythmic antics...take the place of even the most elementary invention." Aside from one repeat broadcast in 1983 it has not been revived, and has never been staged. A BBC archived recording exists. Other works that Burgess wrote or adapted as stage musicals include ''A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music'' (1987) and (with music by Michael J. Lewis) '' ''Cyrano'''', a new musical which ran for 49 performances on Broadway in May 1973.'Cyrano', ''The Guide to Musical Theatre''
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References

External links

Anthony Burgess and James Joyce: Blooms of Dublin
', The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast {{Ulysses 1982 operas English-language operettas Music relating to James Joyce Operas based on novels Works by Anthony Burgess