first two rose-trees she asks produce white and yellow roses. Only the third tree, which grows beneath the student’s window, produces red roses. But this tree has been chilled by the winter frosts and the nightingale learns that she will only obtain her red-rose if she sings to it all night long, pressing her heart against one of its thorns and spilling her warm blood over its cold branches. She must give her life for this red rose. Scene 3. The student understands nothing of this. Hearing the nightingale’s song in the garden, he thinks it something meaningless and of no practical use. Scene 4. So the nightingale, impaled on a thorn of the rose-tree, sings all night long beneath the student’s window. And at dawn she dies and her body falls into the long grass. Scene 5. The student looks out and sees to his delight a red rose, which he immediately plucks and takes to the girl he loves. But the girl is quite unimpressed because she is quite the blind cow, declaring that the rose will not go with her dress and, anyway, she prefers the jewels given to her by the Chamberlain’s nephew. So the student, disillusioned and impatient, hurls the red rose beneath the wheels of a passing carriage and returns to his books. The chorus - as the echo of the voice of the dead Nightingale - sings from off stage: “Remember me…” The duration of the opera is 80 minutes. Review The music of the opera was described by one critic as follows: "...her intricate chamber-score is so delicately, rapturously, expiringly romantic that we hearkened to it all without complaint." (David Murray, Financial Times on July 11, 1994). Music and sound samples The opera culminates with the four songs of the Nightingale, settings of the four sonnets by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894): 1. Remember me, when I am gone away… read the poem (see the music example below) 2. Sleep, unforgotten sorrow, sleep awhile… 3. So tired am I, so weary of to-day… 4. Time flies, hope flags, life piles a wearied wing… see the Sonnet No.10 Bibliography Russians in England by Yuri Kholopov, in 'Ex oriente...: Ten Composers from the Former USSR', Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2002, pp. 207–266 Firsova, Yelena Olegovna by Stephen Johnson, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) External links At the Boosey &