Edward Ficklin

Most of my operas lend themselves to the being handed off to a company to perform, i.e. the traditional model of opera production where the composer and librettist consult in the final stages but are rarely active producers or performers. However, one is not. This one falls into the "hands-off" category when it comes to opera companies. It is, at the moment, my most oft performed work and I have had a huge hand in every single one of those performances. My personal attachment to the work is like no other in my repertoire.

When embarking on something large, we're often given that sage, if cliche, advice. Having recently laid down on paper, finally, the first few lines a new libretto destined to be a grand opera, I find that I need to remind myself of this. Indeed, large endeavors always require a large perspective.

What kind of stage directions should go into a libretto? I've always tended toward a "less-is-more" approach, leaving wide latitude for directors and performers. Still, you have to give them something to hang their hats on, as it were, while still letting them make the work their own.

This is a love note to the wonderful group of musicians who made Opera in Flight at the Gershwin Hotel such a wonderful experience. As a composer, there is perhaps no more inspiring or humbling experience than watching your work take shape in the hands of such dedicated and consummate professionals. Add to that the gratification of a packed house both nights, and you have a very happy composer.

2010 marks the 150th anniversary of the 1860 edition of Walt Whitman's monumental Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman Productions and American Opera Projects have commissioned a series of settings of the Calamus poems to be premiered on several concerts in the New York City area. My contribution to the effort will be a new version of a song I wrote a few years ago, "Trickle Drops," for tenor and piano. The new version, "Drops of Me," will be for baritone and cello.

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.