ABSTRACT
Talma’s sole full opera, The Alcestiad, is perhaps one of the best examples of autobiographical composition in her output. The Alcestiad contains several layers of what Christopher Moore, in writing about Poulenc, another gay Catholic composer, terms “uncanny echoes in the composers’ life.”1 Although the libretto was written by noted author and playwright Thornton Wilder, it spoke to Talma on a personal level, and the entire scenario of the opera functions as an allegory for Talma’s personal anxieties and conflicts, and her setting of the text reflects this. Throughout, she maintains the practices of block forms, soundings, and dis/continuity common to her previous pieces, as well as her individual use of serialism and tonal/axial centricity.
