The Wild Party tells the story of Queenie and Burrs, a volatile couple who throw a party in their apartment to provoke jealousy and assert control over one another. As the night unfolds, guests arrive, drinks flow, and flirtations turn cruel. Tensions escalate, alliances shift, and what begins as spectacle slides toward violence, ending in tragedy. The poem traces this descent with relentless momentum, showing how quickly amusement gives way to destruction.

This work for soprano and chamber ensemble uses text from Joseph Moncure March’s The Wild Party. It follows a single night of reckless celebration where charm, violence, and desire bleed into one another. The language is blunt, fast-moving, and often uncomfortable, capturing a world where pleasure is pursued without limits and empathy steadily erodes.

What gives The Wild Party its lasting power is its portrait of vicious decadence: a society drowning itself in excess while quietly coming apart. Written after World War I and just before the crash of the Great Depression, the poem reflects a moment when distraction and indulgence served as a way to avoid deeper reckoning. That impulse is still with us. In an age of constant stimulation, curated personas, and casual cruelty turned into entertainment, March’s text lands with unsettling familiarity. Setting these words now asks listeners to consider how often cultures repeat the same cycle, mistaking excess for freedom until the cost becomes impossible to ignore. -- Jeffrey Hastings, December 2025