Category: Librettists

Micro Opera: The Maestro and his Muse

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Two character scene:

First character wants a tangible object from the second character while the second character wants something intangible from the first character. Neither character can get what they want, at least not easily.

 

 

Maestro

Look at what time it is
Nearly midnight
Calliope!

 

Calliope

Time – such a silly little human construct
Was I not made for greater things than this?
You washed your hair
How did you know I like lavender

 

Maestro

It was the shampoo in the shower
Shall we get started

Maestro strikes a chord on his piano and straightens the blank sheet music in front of him

 

Calliope

Nice piano – Your pencil’s not sharp

 

Maestro takes a small hand-held plastic pencil sharpener and sharpens his pencil

 

Calliope

Where are we tonight?

 

Maestro

Amsterdam

 

Maestro

I prefer Florence
Jacopo Peri would hold me on his lap as he worked, you know
I would turn pages for him

 

Maestro

A page-turner is not what I’m looking for
Let’s get to work

 

Calliope

I enjoyed twirling his moustache until it stuck straight out

Why do men shave these days?

 

Maestro

I’m getting to work
Will you come?

 

Calliope

If you fondle me right, I just might

 

Maestro
I’m working now
Something new, if you like
It struck me crossing Waterlooplein square

 

Calliope

So you want to play then?

 

Maestro

I like to play

 

Calliope

As do I

 

Maestro

What you have in mind will keep me from my work
We have an understanding, you and I

 

Calliope

Ah my composer, you think you know me so well

 

Maestro

After sixty-years I’ve picked up a thing or two about you

 

Calliope

Sixty years – You’re a child compared to the giants I’ve worked with

 

Maestro

There’s a reason you are here and it’s not to distract me

 

Calliope

What are you doing in this time-riddled, shit-hole of a culture anyway

 

Maestro

This is the only time I have been given (yelling)

 

Calliope.

Temper

 

Maestro

I get angry when people waste my time

 

Calliope

Oh, is that it? You’re comparing me to people now?

 

Maestro

Let’s get to work

 

Calliope

Just imagine me lying naked in your bed
wrapped in your sheets
ripe for the plucking

 

Maestro

I want to write
I need insight
Your help would be appreciated

 

Calliope

You arrogant bastard
You must work for my attention
I’m not some easy thing you can get at any opening night party

 

Maestro

I don’t do that…

 

Calliope

I know, my darling, I know.

 

Maestro

Did I call you or did you grace me with your presence? I can’t remember now. How have we ever managed to work together
I can’t remember

Calliope

Tell me now – what do you feel?

 

Maestro

My feelings border on hatred

 

Calliope

Do you hate when you make love

 

Maestro

Of course not

 

Calliope

Do you hate when you compose

 

Maestro

I cannot hate when I compose
Hate is a mear mask people hide behind

 

Calliope

What are you holding on to then?

 

Maestro

I’m holding
I’m holding on
I’m holding on to
I’m holding onto the one who bears witness to my work

 

Calliope

And who, pray tell, is that?

 

Maestro

It is Phil
The Phil who washes his hair with lavender soap
The Phil who sets a watch and calls you at midnight
The Phil sitting here arguing with his muse
He is insufficient to the task
He will never get this done

 

Calliope

And besides he’s really no fun

 

Maestro

He does the best he can in a mad world

 

Calliope

Take him off the shelf where you keep him
Smash his ceramic face upon the floor
Have sex with me

 

Maestro

You’re my muse not my lover

 

Calliope

Our session is over

 

Maestro

No, it is not.
You don’t want corporeal sex, Calliope
I am old and counting every heartbeat
You want a sacrifice

The Greek choir slowly enters singing

You’re the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne
A goddess of music, song and dance
You want the “I” that is watching me talk to you*
The witness has to go* – I relinquish him to you
the one always peering over my shoulder|
commenting on every thing I do
Have your way with him
Slit his throat for all I care
Take it – this power for me to see myself – take it, Calliope
Take it and suck away at his delicious banality

A Greek choir   walks around the two – conveying the thoughts of the maestro as he separates his daily-self from his artist-self and sets to compose in earnest. The choir echoes the mans constant comment…the incessantly nagging voice in his head droning on and on about nothing of consequence. They keep this up while the Maestro and Calliope sing their duet and the Maestro takes his place at the piano while Calliope takes her place on the floor eating away at a puppet that resembles the Maestro. In the end her face and dress is covered in a sticky, grotesque mass of humanity. Her glee cannot be contained.

 

Greek Choir

I am sitting on a music bench
There is music on the stand in front of me
I am trying to write an opera
The piano has white and black keys
My nose has an itch
It might snow tomorrow
Calliope has beautiful breasts
Did I remember to plug my phone in?
Is this an A or an A flat?
What should I have for breakfast
Should I just stop now and go to sleep
How far is the taxi stand from the airport terminal
Will someone be there to pick me up tomorrow
I hope Paris will be a safe place to be
Did I pack an extra pair of underwear
The back of my head is itchy

 

Calliope

Imagination is now open to you at every single moment of time*
Give me the guy who pays taxes and takes out the garbage
The guy who watches and has to remark on every little thing
Give him to me – I’ll get him done
While you swim in the spontaneous unfolding of life*

Nothings routine
Nothings repeated

Nothings routine
Nothings repeated

One foot in the world of clarity and power*
Don’t think about now it doesn’t matter

Nothings routine
Nothings repeated

Nothings routine
Nothings repeated

The sounds of Amsterdam at 3am overtake the music and drown out everything while the light tightens on the Maestro’s face as he composes, unaware of anything else going on around him. The the light clicks to black.

The End

________________________________________________________________

*Much of the inspiration for this piece came from Philip Glass’ memoir Words Without Music a gift that my husband gave to me for Hanukkah. I gobbled the book up in short order. There are a few lines marked with the * that are taken directly out of his book.

Glass, Philip: Words Without Music Liveright Publishing Company a Division of WW Norton & Co 2015 Pages 382 & 383

The picture of Philip Glass was taken by Anne Leibovitz
The picture of Calliope was taken by some guy who posted it on Google reference has been lost

If you have an issue with my using these images send me a message and I’ll take them down. I’m not making any money with this stuff right now – I’m just keeping one foot in the world of clarity and power and the other in the every day banality of daily life.

 

MMN

 

 

MAWL – Mott Academy of Writing Librettos

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Got that old urge to head back to school!

It’s been a decade since earning an MA in Media Studies where I wrote my thesis on Women and the Medium of Money. True, I am a Financial Analyst today and perhaps that thesis was prophetic but my life has taken on a different focus now: opera.

The first time I took my seat in the Family Circle at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010 was for Don Giovanni. It was Ottavio’s aria, “dalla sua pace la mia dipende” that opened up the depths of possibility to me. See Where Opera Lives for details on that ahah! moment.

I knew – sitting there slack-jawed in the dark – I had to write librettos and I didn’t even know a counter tenor from a treble clef at the time. So I set to learn and this web log is one of those tools I first created to express this need. Well it’s been a few years and the time has come to ratchet up the process.

Fist I explored MFA programs at Hunter, The New School & NYU. There were playwriting programs and creative writing programs but no libretto writing programs. I’m a 52 year old woman; I don’t have time to fuck around any more. So in my particular DIY fashion, I sat down and have fashioned my own course of study and here’s my curriculum for the next year.

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The Mott Academy of Writing Librettos

Year 1: Learn the dramaturgy of playwriting & opera. Understand what makes a play work and, specifically, what makes an opera work.

Texts:
· The Poetics by Aristotle
· The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer
· Opera (the Cambridge Introductions to Music)
· The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies

Daily Assignment: write every morning – it does not have to be good, it just has to be something you write down, typically 2 pages long. The objective is to establish the habit of writing…every…day. This work is for your eyes only. Don’t share it with anyone. This assignment is to start immediately.

Weekly Writing Assignment: write a micro opera – 3 to 5 pages – every week. Use the assignments provided in Stuart Spencer’s book to help guide you. Your Micro Opera (MO) must be uploaded every Sunday night before midnight onto Opera Abecedarian (yup, onto ‘yr blog!) Your first MO must be uploaded by March 13th and every Sunday night thereafter. It may suck at first – but it will get better.

Weekly Reading Assignment: Read a chapter in two of the four text books cited above. You decide what books to read. Take notes, record observations during your daily assignment if you want something to write about in the morning. This reading is to be finished by every Wednesday night. Thursday you begin reading two new chapters.

Quarterly Read (QR): Choose a libretto to read. It can be from any era and genre you like. First time around read it straight – with no music – and make your notes. Next read it through while listening to the score. It is best, at first, to pick librettos of operas you do not know as a familiar score will influence your straight reading of a text. This is to be an intensive two-to-three-hour exercise scheduled every 3 months. Make a setting where you will be able to read through the libretto and write down observations without any interruption. Take a break then listen to the score while reading along with the libretto. Post your QR on ‘yr blog. You must do this once a quarter. When you do it is entirely up to you. QR’s will start 2Q16.

· What was the difference in your experience of the story from the straight read to the scored read?
· What questions did you have about the libretto during the straight read and how did the scored read answer or complicate your questions? Why?
· How did the libretto stand on its own?
· How did the libretto support the score?
· How did the score support the libretto?

I think that is enough for one year. Keep your word, do the assignments and challenge yourself.

Opera Under Construction 

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So I met with composer/rabbinical student, Bronwen Mullin, last month and we spent a fantastic evening fleshing out the eight minute piece we created together this spring entitled Transformation II. (Video and audio will follow this posting later this week.) 

There are few words one can use to sufficiently describe a collaborative conversation: flexible, intuitive, trusting (that’s a big one) and, well, fun! 

Yeah, we had tons of fun making up scenarios and back stories and character traits. Then the fun continued with identifying themes and formulating a path to walk upon. It was like stepping out over a ledge and, together, building the ground in front of us so we could walk out over the edge again; step by step walking out into the, largely, unknown realm of storytelling and discovering ourselves in the process. 

It’s not magical, it’s grinding work. The magic will come, I assume, after all the gestation, labor and delivery is done and we are holding a babe in our arms. Only then for a moment will the magic sparkle. Because then it will be time to gird our loins for putting an opera into production; a different beast, entirely. 

  
When I begin doubting all I need to do is turn to maestro Protopapas’ posting – 8 Reasons Why Kostis Protopapas Programs American Operas – and I remind myself that now is the perfect time and I’m in the perfect place. I pick up my pen and return to writing. 

MMN

Where Opera Lives

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There’s a profound line between thinking about doing something and actually doing it. There’s an even greater gap between doing something for the first time and actually “getting” what you are doing. It was a hell of a process simply going from the idea of attending the opera to physically putting my butt in the chair for our inaugural season subscription at the Met. Everything I went through to get to that point; the flurry of excitement, the phone calls, the planning, the fretting could not prepare me for the watershed, “Ah ha!” realization about the world that was waiting for me in Don Giovanni.

Imagine, if you will, Mozart’s overture beginning with the amazing chord that strikes fear into any listening heart. Now imagine this Opera Abecedarian – green as a length of sod freshly rolled out at the Bryant Park lawn with little signs stating “please stay off while the new grass is establishing roots” – sitting there ready to be opera’ed.

I was holding a great deal of reservation about my subscription. Had I been rash and impulsive? Was I taking my family on a crazy cultural ride to nowhere? I was excited and yet, truly feared boredom. Casting aside my doubt I surrendered to the music. As Act 1 progressed it was going well. I understood the story. The Don was pretty hot with his shirt falling off his shoulder; who cares that he was trying to rape that woman*, the music was pretty. So maybe this opera thing was going to work out. It would make a nice occasional family event – something I could post on Facebook. I felt smug as the story progressed through the Catalogue Aria and into the choral section with the vivid pastoral setting with a lot of business going on. Then everyone cleared the stage and Ramon Vargas, as Don Ottavio, was alone in the spotlight performing Dala Sua Pace. The world slowed down as I fell into empathy for this silly, somber man expressing love for the distant Donna Anna.

What stops my world from spinning; what slaps me hard across the face in the midst of this aria is the sudden and complete understanding that opera lives in the spaces between our relationship with other people and things. Opera gives voice and depth to the commentary we all have running through our head and in doing so, SHUTS THE COMMENTARY UP!
It’s Zen! It’s here and now, man! One pure thought can endure and unfold profoundly before hundreds of people if handled with care by the librettist, composer, orchestra and vocalist all working in concert. Fuckin’ Awesome!

I felt that I was being gifted with another human’s experience, multi-dimensionally. I could see and hear and practically touch the living desire of Don Ottavio and I experienced the depth of his pain and longing. I could taste it, I could feel it in my gut. We went way past empathy to psychic, full body link. Any bullshit chatter I had going on in my head was silent and I’m sure I sat there slack-jawed hanging on Vargas’ every note. This was the magic of opera. It shut me up when I wasn’t even saying anything.

Zen is hard. It’s not every time attending the opera that I get it. There’s still struggle. Preparation is key for I believe it is incumbent upon the audience to bring as much to the evening (or matinee) as the artists are expected to bring. What we bring is our understanding, our money and our listening. What we offer is our willingness to let go of what we understand. We give ourselves generously to the company so they may bring us to a place we cannot take ourselves to. They feed us their world and we love them for it.

Opera lives in the space between our relationships with other people and things.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

MMN

*I abhor even the idea of anyone sexually overpowering another. Rape is not something I take lightly.