by RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS / by RENE ORTH & MARK CAMPBELL

CURTIS INSTITUTE, PHILADELPHIA

directed by MARY BIRNBAUM - costume design by AMANDA SEYMOUR - lighting design by ANSHUMAN BHATIA

photos by WILLIAM BROWN

This double bill of operas brings together two worlds - 1905 Inishmaan, a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, and Houston, Texas in the 1990s. Both stories confront the painful yet inevitable process of children leaving the safety of their parents' homes to confront a dangerous wider world - sometimes never to return.

Inishmaan and Houston share a foundational relationship to water. The Atlantic ocean is an wild, superhuman force that claims the lives of young men with unrelenting ferocity. And the heavy rains of Houston are a constant, pulsing feature of the environment of Empty the House, which ultimately works its way into the rhythm of a family's disintegration.

In the design of this production, water is a chaotic, entropic element that literally engulfs the house - but it also stands as a symbol for other, often inchoate forces that lie beyond the threshold of the home, threatening the bonds of family and community.