Rosa - A Horse Drama

"The Death of a Composer: Rosa - A Horse Drama" is a 1993-94 opera by Louis Andriessen on a libretto by Peter Greenaway, the sixth libretto in Greenaway's "Death of a Composer" series that explores the deaths of ten 20th century composers from Anton Webern to John Lennon. This opera tells the story of Juan Manuel de Rosa, an Argentinian composer who intended to emigrate to the United States to write film scores for Westerns, but was instead murdered in Uruguay. The most memorable aspect of the story is that Rosa falls in love with his horse. The opera is scored for 2 sopranos, tenor, 2 baritones, female speaker, 8 mixed voices, orchestra. Greenaway made a film version in 1999, though it was not shown in the United States until a 2005 premiere at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City.