Blooms of Dublin is a musical play or operetta 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 and RTÉ radio.1 February 1982, BBC Genome It was produced by John Tydeman and Michael Heffernan.The Listener, 7 January, 1982, p 18
The operetta is based on James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.anthonyburgess.org Anthony Burgess Newsletter - Issue 5 It was published in book form in 1986.Google Books The texts of some of the songs also appear in the novels Earthly Powers (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 and music hall styles.'Anthony Burgess: Blooms of Dublin (1982)', A Tune a Day The number "Copulation Without Population" in Act Two is an example – it is 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.Recording of Copulation without Population, International Anthony Burgess Foundation 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 ….".Burgess, Anthony. This Man and Music (1982), Chapter 8
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."Keller, Hans. 'Phoneydom' in The Listener, 11 February 1982, p 26-7 Aside from one repeat broadcast in 1983 it has not been revived, and has never been staged. 24 March 1983, BBC Genome 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.Anthony Burgess' Stage Musicals, International Anthony Burgess Foundation'Cyrano', The Guide to Musical Theatre
References
External links Anthony Burgess and James Joyce: Blooms of Dublin, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast