George Hunka has been writing about the production of his new play, Sustaining. I am finding the process fascinating, as there are a good deal of similarities between the process Mr. Hunka describes and the process of getting a new musical composition performed.
Mr. Hunka's intrepidity has inspired me to write about the composition of my newest piece, which, as he reveals in this post, happens to be an opera.
I became fascinated with opera when I served as the stage manager for a production of Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins. The excitement of performance and the intricacy of the production itself (as well as the great music) were and are intoxicating. I have a couple of ideas for full-length operas, but I wanted to do something small first, as a way of finding out if I can do it and without investing X number of years in a full-scale piece.
To that end, I recently acquired the operatic rights to David Foster Wallace's "Everything is Green", a short short story from his collection Girl With Curious Hair. It is a two character domestic drama that I have massaged into three short scenes. Right now I'm working on the end of a prelude, which will seque into the first scene.
I'll keep you posted on my progress periodically. I don't think I'll get too much into technical details, unless, of course, a particularly juicy spelling problem comes up.
No comments:
Post a Comment