The Garden of Martyrs
[1] The opera is drawn from an historical event, covering the last days of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, Irish Catholic immigrants who were tried and executed in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1806 for the murder of Marcus Lyon.
The opera has a modern resonance of the story's theme of “immigration to America and the difficulty and suspicion with which newcomers are greeted.”[2] The Garden of Martyrs musically dramatizes the last five days of the men's lives.
The protagonist is Father Jean Cheverus, a French immigrant priest who travels from Boston to Northampton to comfort the men—even though he believes them guilty.
According to music critic Clifton Noble Jr., “The audience was on its feet almost before the curtain could be raised for the curtain calls, raining down ‘bravoes’ on Sunday afternoon's sold-out performance of the new opera.”[4] “I am ashamed of the (audience) before me ... Are there men to whom, the death of their fellow beings is a spectacle of pleasure, an object of curiosity?
—Father Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus, in his sermon prior to the execution of Dominic Daley and James Halligan[5]In November, 1805, a young man named Marcus Lyon was brutally murdered on the turnpike in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, near Springfield.
Subsequent research has borne out a miscarriage of justice: the men were likely innocent, victims of prejudice and a rush to judgment.
[3][6] The action opens less than a week before the scheduled execution of Dominic Daley and James Halligan, to take place in Northampton, where they have been held since the time of their arrest for the murder of Marcus Lyon.
She implores Cheverus to ask Attorney General Sullivan to let him preach the public oration at the execution in lieu of the Protestant preacher the state normally appoints.
Unable to find a place to lodge, Cheverus and Finola are approached by the Widow Clark, who offers them a bed for the night.
Finola accepts her offer of a bed, while Cheverus, drinking from the Widow's whisky bottle, stumbles around in the meadows by the Connecticut River.
Finola rushes in, confronting Sullivan with suppression of evidence at the trial; what she has heard from the Widow undermines the veracity of Laertes Fuller's testimony.
As night falls, Halligan and Cheverus share confidences and remorse about the circumstances that caused them to come to America.
Clifton Noble wrote “with a superb cast, excellent chorus, and 28 members of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra under Kevin Rhodes’ direction pressed into service, Sawyer and Erdman's creation was in able hands.”[4] Peter Bergman called Sawyer’s music “sweet and strong and sometimes stunning, as in back to the wall-knees weak stunning” with Erdman's libretto characterized as “terse and terrific.” [8] Marvin J.
