The Violet Hour

The Violet Hour is a play by Richard Greenberg. It was commissioned by and originally produced by South Coast Repertory with Hamish Linklater as Seavering and Mario Cantone as Gidger. It received its Broadway debut on November 6, 2003 when the Manhattan Theatre Club produced it as the first play in the renovated Biltmore Theatre. MTC's production had a cast featuring Robert Sean Leonard as Seavering and Cantone reprising his role as Gidger, and ran for 54 performances, the planned length of its subscription run. Both productions were directed by Evan Yionoulis.

Synopsis

The play takes place in New York in 1919. A young publisher named John Pace Seavering has enough money to publish one book. He is torn between publishing the gargantuan novel of his former college roommate, and perhaps more than friend, Denis McCleary. His other option is to publish the memoirs of his mistress, Jessie Brewster. Denis needs the book published so that he can look good in front of the father of the woman that he is in love with. Jessie, however, needs her memoirs published because of her life expectancy running out. Then a mysterious, paper spewing machine enters. The papers are from books that have information about the lives of the characters and their futures. Gidger, Seavering's assistant, learns that he becomes a person of no importance and that his dog becomes famous. Seavering learns from these papers that he becomes a well-to-do publisher and no matter whose book he publishes, he will either lose his mistress or his friend.

The Violet Hour (album)

The Violet Hour is the proper debut album by The Clientele, released in July 2003. Its title was taken from T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land. All songs were written by The Clientele except for "Jamaican Rum Rhumba" (traditional, arranged by The Clientele). The US release features two bonus enhanced videos for "House on Fire" and the single "Reflections After Jane."

Track listing

Singles

Das Veilchen

"Das Veilchen" ("The Violet"), K. 476, is a song for voice and piano by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, written in Vienna on 8 June 1785, to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Lyrics

Goethe wrote the poem in 1773 or early 1774. It was first published in March 1775 in his first Singspiel Erwin und Elmire which was first set to music in 1775 by the German composer Johann André (a revival in 1776 used music by Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and by Carl David Stegmann, and another 1785 had music by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf and Karl Christian Agthe).

In 1771, Goethe had written the poem "Heidenröslein" which tells of a young man's plucking of a feisty rose. In "Das Veilchen" it is a careless girl who destroys a violet, a metaphor for a young man's heart.

Music

This song is Mozart's only setting to a text by Goethe. It not clear where exactly Mozart encountered the poem, but is likely through one of its settings by other composers of the time. Mozart made a telling addition by adding his last line.