Chaucer, the opera: how to make Middle English sing

Immersing himself in Chaucer’s world to write the libretto for the Tale of Januarie, Stephen Plaice found plenty of inspiration in its vivacity and unabashed bawdiness, and a writer who still has plenty to teach us todayI spent the summer before last in 14th-century Lombardy. I went to the local spice market and watched the women hawking poudre-marchant tart, galingale and blankmanger.I was invited to a wedding where I drank pyment, meeth and spiced ale, and ate wafres, pipying hoot out of