Ria by Lacy Rose

Lacy Rose’s song cycle, “Ria,” is a meditation on three portraits of Ria Munk by the Viennese painter, Gustav Klimt. Ria was unlucky in love: when her fiancé broke off their engagement, a heartbroken Ria took her own life, shooting herself in the chest on December 28, 1911. Her mother hired Klimt to paint her daughter’s posthumous portrait. The mother complained that the first portrait portrayed Ria as “too dead.” She found the second too sensuous, as it depicted Ria’s robe hanging open, revealing her breasts. Perhaps fittingly, Gustav Klimt died before he could finish the third.

The three movements of Lacy Rose’s “Ria” song cycle are inspired by Klimt’s portraits. The first movement begins inside the painting, Ria Munk I, with Ria asking her bereavers to "close and coin her eyes." In the second movement, inspired by Ria Munk II (also known as “The Dancer”), the woman "who holds the marigolds with swan-soft hands" asks the spectator to ponder her double identity and origin of inspiration. For the third movement, the unfinished figure in Ria Munk III exclaims that she "begins and ends in death."

Lacy Rose is a NYC-based classically trained vocalist, composer and lyric poet.

lacyrosemusic.com