Opera in Flight
operamission will present an evening of one-acts, scenes, and instrumental music new and not so new on April 2 and 3, 2010. My contribution to the evening's festivities will be my one-act opera Anniversary, originally penned in 2003.
Summer in Sombor (Letu u Somboru)
Summer in Sombor is a week-long composition seminar led by the members of the South Oxford Six composers collective. This seminar is an opportunity for up to 12 students to spend a week with the members of the collective and a resident ensemble exploring the art and craft of composition from a variety of perspectives. The seminar includes group sessions, individual instruction, readings by the resident ensemble and public concerts. The language of instruction will be English and the seminar takes place in Sombor, Serbia in July 12-18, 2010.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it...
operamission, that is…
Stage a concert of Handel scenes in a hotel lobby. Impossible, you say? Well, the inimitable and indefatigable Jennifer Peterson (conductor, vocal coach and self-proclaimed Handel nut) did that just last night at the Gershwin Hotel.
What Makes a Good Opera?
I read recently in Center for Contemporary Opera's Opera Today (Fall 2009) an interview with J. D. McClatchy, author of many a libretto. He was asked the question of how he decides what subjects can become libretti, or as the interviewer put it, "stage-worthy." His response:
My own experience—of both watching and making operas over the years—tells me that melodrama works best. Comedy is rarely funny, and its impulses are handicapped by the slowness of music; tragedy that begins with too abstract or merely psychological a premise grows wispy and tedious. But melodrama offers the possibilities of variety, outsized characters, and a plot that is both complicated and resolved.
