"Go For Broke"
This is the story of one man's (everyman's) brush with riches and how it didn't change him. Peter Schickele uses a lottery winner to weave a tale of what can befall you when you get what you ask for and what happens when you get what you really want.
Around the turn of the 17th century of small group of Italian noblemen and composers seeking to re-create classic Greek tragedy as they understood it, invented the opera. A somewhat earlier, simpler and less revolutionary form of musical storytelling was the madrigal opera or madrigal comedy developed by Vecchi and other composers. These works, which were not necessarily staged, consisted of a series of madrigals that told a comic story, unlike opera as we have come to know it, however, this was a basically choral form, with the vocal ensemble playing the part of a narrator as well as that of each individual character.
GO FOR BROKE is patterned on this model. It consists of six madrigals that tell the story of a man who finds out that good luck is not enough. Sometimes the chorus words are those of a narrator (Prologue: "Here's John Q. Public . . ."), and sometimes they are those of our hero himself, or his friend the bartender, or those of the host of people who descend upon him when good fortune strikes (the middle numbers: Taxes, Charity, Kin, and Company at the Bar). The Finale even has a moral. . .
I have for many years been interested in the concept of theatrical or semi theatrical musical works, in which the musicians perform more than one function. . . The madrigal comedy form fits right into this predilection.
Commissioned by a consortium consisting of the Dale Warland Singers in Minneaplis/St. Paul, Chanticleer in San Francisco and Musica Sacras in New York, GO FOR BROKE was completed on April 19, 1989 and first performed by the Dale Warland Singers on November 7, 1989. The commission was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Peter Schickele
