McClatchy, well established in the US as a poet, teaches creative writing at Yale, and has already written several librettos, of which Emmeline, for Tobias Picker, is perhaps the most familiar.
Now sixty-five, Myles is the author of nineteen books (also some plays and libretti), two of which came out last month: "I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems" and a reissue of her 1994 memoir, "Chelsea Girls".
There isn't any libretto to speak of, which makes Byrnes's ability to convey story through song all the more striking.
A striking proof to the contrary is offered in the German libretti of Wagner, which tend to deal in a variety of short lines.
(I'd nonetheless be happy to see the screenwriter, Phyllis Nagy, win for Best Adapted Screenplay — she gives Haynes and, for that matter, the cinematographer, Ed Lachman, a superb libretto on the basis of which to make memorably musical images).
At some point he began conceiving and co-writing projects, including Pirates! (a take on Pirates of Penzance which he conceived with Benjamin and John McDaniel) and Band Geeks! (he wrote the libretto of with Tommy Newman), both of which he also directed regionally.
They took away porch furniture, paintings and golf clubs as well as photographs, sheet music, librettos, playbills and screenplays, most of which went for $1 or $2.
(Ever productive, Hughes wrote twenty plays and a handful of musicals and opera librettos, the most well regarded of which is "Street Scene," for which Kurt Weill provided the music).
There are just two problems: the libretto and the music, against both of which a superb cast - with Christopher Purves's larger-than-life Disney leading a gloriously authentic Fifties crowd - struggle heroically.
For her 2011 opera, Gogol (for which she also wrote the libretto), she produced some oil paintings, two of which were exhibited and sold in Moscow.
