took on the role of the Baroness. For its 50th anniversary revival by the New York City Opera in November 2007, she was once more featured in that role, with Lauren Flanigan taking the title role. Highlights from the score include the soprano scena and aria He has come, he has come!...Do Not Utter a Word (recorded by Leontyne Price, Roberta Alexander, and Renée Fleming), the mezzo aria Must the Winter Come So Soon? (recorded by Denyce Graves and Roberta Alexander), and the last-act quintet, To Leave, to Break. Source of the story In many print media it says that the libretto of Gian Carlo Menotti is based on a work of Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), described variously as a "short story" or "novella". However, the story is not found in any of Isak Dinesen's works. There is evidence of Samuel Barber's having read Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales, and the mistaking of the proper source may have come from a proclamation by Menotti and Barber, that the opera reproduced the "atmosphere" of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. "Menotti recalled, 'I was writing a libretto for Sam, and Sam is essentially a romantic personality...'" Menotti was "inspired by Isak Dinesen's stories, in particular her Seven Gothic Tales. He said, 'I felt that the atmosphere... would make a wonderful opera.'" Blixen was present at the premiere of the opera, but part way through the performance she pleaded illness and left the theater. Her secretary wrote that Barber was "upset" by Blixen's premature departure from the opera. Blixen made no public comment. Roles Synopsis Time: About 1905. Place: Vanessa's country house in a northern country. Act 1 In her secluded country house, Vanessa awaits the arrival of Anatol, a man who had been Vanessa's lover twenty years before. After he left, she covered up all the mirrors of the house until his expected return, unwilling to face looking at her aging self. She lives alone with her mother, the Baroness, who has refused to speak to her for twenty years, and with her niece, Erika. Thinking that the man who arrives and who is called Anatol is her former lover, Vanessa refuses to reveal her face to him until he says he still loves her. He says that he does, but she does not recognize him. It is the young Anatol who has come, his father now dead. Upset, Vanessa