Description

First Edition and First Printing. 8vo, bound in the original stiff dark-green paper wrappers with stiff yellow paper outer dustjacket printed in black and red 16ff, unpaginated. A very fine copy, beautifully preserved.

Edizione: prize-winning poet seamus heaney gives us a new english-langauge version of janacek's 22 section quasioperatic song cycle.<br> "in 1917, while reading his local newspaper, the czech composer leoš janá ek discovered the poems that he was to set to music in his song cycle diary of one who disappeared. written by ozef kalda and published anonymously, they tell the story of a farmer's boy who abandons his home because he has fallen in love with a gypsy. these english versions by seamus heaney were commissioned by the english national opera for a series of international performances, which opened in dublin in october of 1999." - from the jacket of the macmillan edition, published in 2000.