The Watergate Cantata: Libretto and History by Steven Holloway

The Watergate Cantata is a political satire of the American Presidency which follows the 70s political scandal from the burglary at the Watergate up to Nixon's resignation. Premiering in the summer of 1975 near the anniversary of that resignation, Holloway sets to music his abridgement of the transcripts of the Senate Watergate Hearings. Each Senator and witness is given his own musical style in which to tell his story: Sam Ervin is wigged Baroque, Howard Baker is pop crooner, Maurice Stans is Gilbert and Sullivan, John Dean is deadpan Modern, John Mitchell is a Charles Ives' patriotic band collision and Ehrlichman is Wagnerian to name a few. The Narrator and Senator Ervin deliver moral homilies reminiscent of a Baroque cantata suggesting comparisons to the illicit behaviour of the current US administration.