“We players hold up mirrors to you in the audience for you to see your reflection.”
Prince of Players
(2014-2016) 90’
Chamber opera in two acts
Text Libretto by the composer, based on the play
A Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher
Scoring 3S, 3M, 5T, Bar, 2BBar; chorus
2.2.2.2-2.2.0.0-timp.perc-harp-strings
Federico De Michelis (left) as Thomas Betterton and Ben Edquist (right) as Edward Kynaston in Prince of Players
Houston Grand Opera, 2016
PHOTO: LYNN LANE
Floyd’s final opera, Prince of Players, is based on the true story of Edward Kynaston, the last man to perform women’s roles during England’s Restoration Period. Prince of Players deals with the crises this idolized star experiences when his enormously successful career abruptly ends by an edict from Charles II: “No He shall ere agin play a She on the British stage.”
Kynaston had been acting since he was a boy, taken off the streets as a homeless orphan and trained by older men in the highly stylized acting of Restoration comedy and drama— a common practice at the time. The opera follows Kynaston’s fall from stardom, his descent into the dregs of English society, and his struggle to claim his true identity.
Notable Moment: “I was an orphan and a chimney sweep”
Kynaston (baritone), Act I, Scene 4
After King Charles II issues an edict banning men from portraying women onstage— in effect, taking Edward Kynastons’s livelihood away from him— Kynaston responds with this impassioned plea.
Ben Edquist as Edward Kynaston
in Prince of Players
Houston Grand Opera,2016
PHOTO: LYNN LANE
“Floyd’s telling of the story has its eyes wide open to some cruelties beneath its exotic, period-piece exterior. Oppresive gender roles, rigid social prohibitions, and the artirariness and damaging consequences of absolute power all leave their scars on Kynaston, so that we are as much awakened to his condition as uplifted by his triumph.”