The Grapes of Wrath/Live from the Minnesota Opera World Premiere

Disc 1:

1. Act 1. The Last Time There Was Rain
2. Act 1. I Keep My Nose Clean / Where's Ya' Headin'?
3. Act 1. So Long, Savior / I Baptized You / A Naked Tree a-Wastin' in the Sun
4. Act 1. Gone / Not My Fault
5. Act 1. Who Are You Cleanin' For?
6. Act 1. Promise Me, Tommy
7. Act 1. You Can't Keep a Joad in Jail / Not My Fault
8. Act 1. Good Machine
9. Act 1. Tricky Old Devil
10. Act 1. Us
11. Act 1. Soothing Syrup
12. Act 1. The Plenty Road / Okies / Need Some Gas, Mister / Okies/The Plenty Road
13. Act 1. Handbills
14. Act 1. I Can't Tell You
15. Act 1. We'll Find Work
16. Act 1. The Zephyr / One Star
17. Act 1. He Don't Understand
18. Act 1. A Word for This Old Man
19. Act 1. Finale. Us (Reprise)

Disc 2:

1. Act 2. Truck Drivers
2. Act 2. Dry Blue Night / We Can Be Quiet / Rest Peaceful, Mama / Septet. Dry Blue Night
3. Act 2. Inspection Station
4. Act 2. Like They Promised
5. Act 2. My Plum Tree / No Work Here
6. Act 2. The Fire in the Orchard / Ants on the Highway
7. Act 2. Beg Your Pardon, Ma'am / Nice, Neighborly Place We Found Here / Hooverville? Where's Hooverv
8. Act 2. Hooverville's Anywhere
9. Act 2. No One Is Goin'
10. Act 2. Handbills / Into the Back, Tom
11. Act 2. I Can Be a Help
12. Act 2. Simple Child

Disc 3:

1. Act 3. People Again / Se Ya' at the Hoedown, Ladies!
2. Act 3. Square Dance
3. Act 3. Hold on, Deputy / Handbills (Reprise)
4. Act 3. Fried Dough
5. Act 3. Join the Line / Damn! Them Peaches
6. Act 3. A Step Up the Ladder
7. Act 3. Dry Blue Night/Evening Stroll
8. Act 3. Things Turn Around / A Word for You, Old Friend
9. Act 3. Dios Te Salve
10. Act 3. That You, Ma? / Promise Me, Tommy (Reprise)
11. Act 3. I'll Be There
12. Act 3. The Day the Rain Began
13. Act 3. We Couldn't Save It
14. Act 3. Little Dead Moses
15. Act 3. Barn Road... Night / Gone (Reprise)
16. Act 3. You Own This Barn?
17. Act 3. Take It, Mister / One Star (Reprise)

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Customer Reviews

Rating: - A good first recording
I sang in the third production of this work at Pittsburgh Opera where we premiered a revision prepared by Ricky Ian Gordan (composer) and Michael Korie (librettist).This revision was necessary, in part due to dramatic considerations as perceived by the composer and the librettist, but also because of its length (see addendum).Yet the original version as recorded here is a wonderful documentation of a significant American premiere by one of America's premiere vocal composers.The original cast ... Read More
Rating: - Critics Weight In on "The Grapes Of Wrath"
Gordon, who first made his name in the theatre and as a composer of
Broadway-style songs, fills his score with beautifully turned genre
pieces, often harking back to American popular music of the twenties and
thirties: Gershwinesque song-and-dance numbers, a few sweetly soaring love songs in the manner of Jerome Kern, banjo-twanging ballads, saxed-up jazz choruses, even a barbershop quartet. You couldn't ask for a more comfortably appointed evening of vintage musicalAmericana ... Read More
Rating: - Stephen Eddin's All Music Guide Review
It's a pleasure to report that Ricky Ian Gordon's The Grapes of Wrath deserves a place in the extremely tiny pantheon of successful American operas based on classic American novels. (Porgy and Bess, the granddaddy of American opera, and in a class by itself, is based on a minor novel, Dubose Heyward's Porgy, which would undoubtedly be forgotten today if it were not for the opera.) Gordon is obviously a theatre composer -- he knows how to shape an ensemble, a scene, an act, to create a compelling large ... Read More
Rating: - Alan Rich on the CD



Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Composer Ricky Ian Gordon's fluent, powerful setting of a great -- maybe the greatest -- American novel, John Steinbeck's ``The Grapes of Wrath,'' is now available on a vivid, three-CD box set from PS Classics. The opera already has drawn critical raves and silenced many of the naysayers who bemoan the lack of another great American opera of the stature of ``Porgy and Bess.''

First produced by the Minnesota Opera with a young, eager and mostly unknown ... Read More
Rating: - Pleasantly Surprised
The recording is great! I was expecting the music to be super modern sounding but it's got a great colloquial feel to it with banjo and harmonica. There are even some jazzy parts. The singers are fantastic and the orchestra is fabulous!