(2026) SUMMERLAND
Chapter V from Chronicles of Ghosts
A chamber work for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and orchestra · 23 minutes
Music and libretto by Clarice Assad
Commissioned by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra
Summerland is based on the lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, as documented in Rachel Hope Cleves’s biography Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2014). The work unfolds in Summerland, in the afterlife. Sylvia Drake has searched for Charity Bryant, her companion of forty-four years, across a thousand lifetimes. She finds her at last in Summerland, where Charity has been waiting so long that her memories have faded, and Sylvia must help her remember who they were, and what they built together.
At a glance
Characters
Sylvia Drake — soprano
Charity Bryant — mezzo-soprano
Setting
Summerland, the Spiritualist afterlife where souls rest between lives.
Commission
Commissioned by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.
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Full instrumentation
2 Oboes
English Horn
2 Clarinets in B♭
Bass Clarinet in B♭
2 Bassoons
4 Horns in F
3 Trumpets in C
3 Trombones
Tuba
Timpani
Percussion (3 players)
Harp
Soprano
Mezzo Soprano
Strings
Percussion 1: Bass Drum, Suspended Cymbal, Vibraphone, Mouth Harmonica in C
Percussion 2: Chimes, Tubular Bells, Cymbals, Tam-tam, Suspended Cymbal, Drum Set
Percussion 3: Marimba, Glockenspiel, Cymbals, Tam-tam, Suspended Cymbal
Mouth Harmonica in C (ad lib. passage): Trumpets 2 & 3, Trombones 1 & 2, Trombone 3, Tuba, and Percussion 1 double on a C harmonica cluster.
“Tiny Bells”: Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello, and Contrabass double on tiny bells.
Sources
Charity and Sylvia were real women who lived together in Weybridge, Vermont, for forty-four years, running a tailoring business at a time when women could not own property, sign contracts, or vote in their own right. Their partnership was, in every practical sense, a marriage, quietly known and accepted within their community, even as the era’s churches and physicians treated desire itself as a danger to health and soul. Assad’s libretto moves between tenderness and dark comedy as Charity slowly recovers her memory: her restless youth, her string of loves before Sylvia, the couple’s courtship and shared business, and the era’s genuinely strange attempts to police desire. Charity died in 1851 at seventy-four; Sylvia lived seventeen more years without her, preserving the letters and poems Charity had tried to burn. The two are buried together in Weybridge under a single headstone, which still stands today.
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Their story, in full
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Performance history
- September 18, 2026SUMMERLAND (World Premiere)Flynn Center, Burlington