beauty of nature

Flowering Tree is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the

in his 1997 book A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. In actuality, it is a Kannada folklore told by women which is translated by A. K. Ramanujan to English. The story was collected in several versions in the Karnataka region over the span of twenty years by Ramanujan and his fellow folklorists. It is a woman-centered tale and attempts to establish a sisterhood between women and nature. This has been regularly done by many feminist writers.[1]Like most folktales from around the world, A Flowering Tree synthesizes two discrete elements: first, an impossible narrative (a girl turns into a tree; a prince marries a peasant), and second, mythic archetypes which resonate deeply with all of us, no matter what our beliefs.[2] According to Ramannujan himself who analysed the folk tale while translating it, "It is a story of woman's ecology and vulnerability of her emerging sexuality..."

This was published posthumously and editedThis was published posthumously and edited by Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes along with other folktales compiled and translated by Ramanujan.[3] His story was adapted into an opera by John Adams in 2006.There lived a poor woman in a certain town with her two daughters. The younger daughter decided to help her impoverished family. She turned into a beautiful tree by performing a strange ritual with her older sister. They carefully performed the ritual which required two pitchers of water – one to transform the younger to a tree and the other back to human form. Her older sister plucked flowers from the transformed tree making sure that she doesn't damage any other part of the tree. She then converts her younger sister to human form. They weaved the fragrant flowers into garlands and sold them at the King's palace. They decided to keep this a secret from their mother and saved the money for future.