S3/E3 Looking forward

Writing the evening-long opera took less than a year, to the great surprise of many, including the composer! In an exchange typical of Facebook, my sister-in-law’s congratulations included a dig about my new home’s still-unpacked boxes; the retort after my LOL emoji was that many would undoubtedly be lying around anyway, opera or no!

On the one-year anniversary of starting work on my opus 91 (May 25th), I decided to repost my Facebook entry marking the date here, as S3/E1. Eventually everything there worth keeping will migrate similarly to this more appropriate forum. Recall that in E2 I mentioned that certain folks in my circle could not be prevailed upon to click on a Facebook link, for love or money! For everyone’s convenience I will provide here all the resources that clicking on E1 would avail, which puts us all on the same page.

This explanatory text (from June 13, 2022) that introduced the audio sample linked below was, in fact, my first public message anywhere regarding the project:

“For a while I have had the text for an opera fashioned by a British librettist. Set in medieval Armenia, he sent it to me in three versions, engendering quite a muddle! On May 25th I settled upon which iteration of the first scene I would be setting. Out of my subconscious emerged this bit of exotica, which left no doubt to what use I was supposed to put it. I finished that first scene today, ten minutes of music in complete orchestral detail, and wanted to mark the occasion before collating now the versions of Scene 2. God be with me. We begin with a fanfare announcing the entrance of the local feudal overlord.”

https://www.dropbox.com/s/900kma3b0b33d0a/91Bsample1.mp3?dl=0

A lot of friends and colleagues wished me well, but this comment from Jonathan Clift, the Bradford-based librettist, had to be the most heartening:

“I am knocked sideways! Thank you! it has such melody and at the same time there is a mediaeval/strange feeling to the music thta sets it nicely in Armenia bravo!!”

Similar snippets that accrued in real time as the project progressed, however, were effectively superseded by audio of the first scene entire, once it was finished. This then evolved gradually into a definitive listening version, as I attained greater and greater mastery of the NotePerformer plug-in which had recently been released for the Finale music software I use. Eventually even that would be displaced: by a scrolling score video, as have most (but not yet all at this writing) of my opera’s other scenes. The advantage therein, even for those who don’t read music, is that you can see the lyrics being sung and take cognizance of the stage directions. (A side comment: “This first scene is Music B because A is a short choral-orchestral Prelude I would write later.”)

https://vimeo.com/793877457

From here on in, I will link material from this forum to Facebook and elsewhere, not the other way around. And so we arrive at a common square 1.