Back into Midsummer again

So I’m finally back to work on Summer’s Twilight, my one act opera of Midsummer Nights’ Dream. I’ve been away scoring Theatre Hopkins’ Arabian Nights, and Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s Twelfth Night, and moving twice, and graduating, and doing a job search, but now I’ve got a few days of lull. Just a few, but I’m taking the time to get my head back on my favorite project. I hate my favorite project. Getting my head back into it means putting together a dozen different copies of every scene, notes from notebooks, libretti, score drafts in print-out and manuscript, and whatever thoughts I have in my head. I’ve been making tweaks here and there, but mostly I’ve been doing information hygiene. It all comes back to what I want to do with the piece. Do I want to create a completely musical performance? Not really. Do I want to play with the relationship between text and music? Obviously. Do I want straightforward songs with verses and clear form that everyone will understand? Far more than I ever have before. That change means I have to dig deep back into the play and play lyricist instead of editor for a while. I’ve come back to this piece, and re-imagined different sections of it, and even the entire concept, a dozen times at least. I’m a little afraid that I’m going back over the same ground instead of making progress, no matter how far off the actual score page I’m making it. It’s hard having passages in the piece that I’m so proud of, but knowing how much more I have to do before I can show it to anyone. Well, back to the salt mines of plot diagrams and song lyrics.

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