Murder at Taliesan PostScript; FLW on Stage and in Song

I've been a bit surprised at the number of people who have contacted me, or to whom I've mentioned the Taliesan murders, who have been unfamiliar with the event. Perhaps I shouldn't be. William R. Drennan notes in Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesan Murders that

"...the murders have received surprisingly short shrift from Wright's vast number of chronicler...One of Wright's chief biographers dismisses the murders in a single paragraph. In the wake of those seven savage deaths and the destruction of Taliesan, another source notes merely that 'This incident marked a rupture in Wright's career.'"

From the little Internet research I've done, Drennan's statement regarding the event's dismissal seems to be true. I've found very little.

There is, however, one somewhat unusual but interesting acknowledgement of the tragedy: Shining Brow: The Opera about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Shining Brow ("Taliesan" means "shining brow" in Welsh) premiered in 1993 at the Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin. The music was written by Daren Hagen with words by Paul Muldoon. In 1997 the Chicago Opera Theater presented the production in Chicago.


Grief-stricken townspeople mourn as Wright (Robert Orth) places wildflowers on Mamah's grave. (Photo Credit: Chicago Opera Theater production; Shining Brow website)

The opera dramatizes Frank Lloyd Wright's life from 1903 to 1914, beginning with Wright visiting his fallen mentor, Louis Sullivan, in The CliffDwellers Club and ending with Taliesan in ruins and Wright in despair but vowing to rebuild. A more complete description of the opera's plot is provided by Daren Hagen on the opera's website. Unfortunately, there is no recording of the opera yet available. Let's hope a Chicago company will revive the production sometime soon.

I ran across two other artistic tributes to Wright that you might find interesting.


The first is "Franks Home," a play written by Richard Nelson and directed by Robert Falls at its world premier performance at Chicago's Goodman Theater in 2006. The story is set in 1923, just after Wright had completed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Peter Weller starred as Frank Lloyd Wright and photos from the production are available on the Goodman Theater website. The New York Times review was not particularly glowing.

A far more favorable response has been given to the melancholy Paul Simon song, "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright," sung by Simon and Art Garfunkel on the 1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water album:

Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change your point of view
When I run dry
I stop a while and think of you

There is some discussion as to whether the song is actually a tribute to Wright, but I prefer to take it at face value. You judge:





Photo Credits: "Frank's Home" photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times