It might seem farfetched that Winona Ryder, Emma Watson, and Charles Ives might have anything in common, but there IS a connection of sorts: Ryder appeared in a 1994 film based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic 19th century novel, “Little Women,” Emma Watson appears in the 2019 remake, and, in 1913, American composer Charles Ives composed the second movement of his “Concord” sonata for piano, a movement titled “The Alcotts,” which evokes Louisa May, her novel and her real-life family and friends, who included the New England “Transcendentalists,” Emerson and Thoreau.

Set during the American Civil War, Alcott’s “Little Women” chronicles the coming of age of four young women in Concord, Massachusetts.  The story of has charmed readers and film-goers around the world.  Ives’s music, like Alcott’s novel, is nostalgic, affectionate, and quietly powerful.

The contemporary American composer, Mark Adamo, crafted an opera based on Alcott’s “Little Women” which premiered on today’s date in 1998 at the Opera Studio of Houston Grand Opera.  After its premiere, that company’s general director, David Gockley, pronounced Adamo’s opera “destined to become an American classic,” and since its successful Houston Opera revival in 2000, Adamo’s “Little Women” has been staged again and again, to equal acclaim from audiences and critics.

Charles Ives (1874 - 1954) The Alcotts, fr Concord Sonata Anthony de Mare, piano CRI 837

Mark Adamo (b. 1962) Little Women Houston Grand Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor. Ondine 988