Finished Scene 9 08/10/2008
 

Just a quick update- I finished Scene 9. The mezzo's aria proved to be kind of difficult to write, but finally today I got into a pattern for it and finished it. I'm really proud of it! It's way better than the two other drafts that I deleted, heh. So, that means the big, dramatic turning point of the opera has been composed... Only two more scenes! As of now, Magnum Opus is 51 minutes and 25 seconds long. Maybe I won't get to an hour and a half after all, but that might be for the best anyway.

 
 

I've recently been really diving into Britten's opera Peter Grimes. It's absolutely phenomenal... I've only really looked at/listened to Act I so far, but I'll get into more of it soon. My favorite part so far is the Second Interlude, when the storm is hitting the town. It's really, really cool stuff.

After still more edits to Scene 8, I've finally made some headway into Scene 9 of Magnum Opus. I'm pretty proud of my accompaniments for Schumann's little extended solo and for the Melpomene/Robert/Schumann trio. I think it could make for some really exciting theatre. I'm about to hit the climax of Scene 9... all in all, I have fewer than 3 1/2 pages of libretto to set!

School starts up again in 3 weeks. I'm hoping to have the last pages done by then so I have a month to get some good editing done before I start orchestrating. I'm looking forward to getting back to school and really putting this opera into motion with auditions!