Creating a Libretto

My writing partner, Lindsay Baker, is an amazingly talented woman. I marvel at her creativity and the magic that happens when we create together.

A few years ago, (I think it was 2004 ... when we were on the beach in Punta Cana...) we decided to adapt Edith Wharton's 'House of Mirth' into an opera. We thought the central character, Lily Bart, was such a tragic figure and that opera would be a wonderful way to tell her story.

We talked about the novel a lot ... the problems of adapting it. We visited the Mills Mansion in Rheinbeck,NY and went to "The Mount" (Edith Wharton's home in Lenox Massachusetts) and went to the Gilded Age museum there too. We also asked Justin Ferrate--a wonderful New York City walking guide--to help us find Lily Bart in New York through our 21st Century eyes.

It took us a while to figure it out, and we decided that we would approach the project in tableaux. In other words, we would present five key scenes from the novel into a living picture with music and connect those scenes with choral commentary from a chorus we call Society.

While we were in Chicago with a production of our show "Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, A Musical" we were able to work on the Prologue and First scene. In late March, we presented this at the Women in Music Festival 2010 at the Eastman School of Music and found that this way of telling Lily's story is going to work ...

Last night, we drafted out the last sceene. Today we will create the transition leading into it and do the Epilogue.

What is so fascinating about working on this project is the way that the show and its music is coming to us. We are working on libretto first, which is very unusual for us. We don't feel the need to take the work we have done and turn it into music instantly ... instead ...It's like the entire opera libretto has to be written before we can begin the arias and odes.

When we write musicals, songs and the ways to tell the stories come to Lindsay and me in all kinds of ways. Inspiration is different every time. Sometimes the lyrics come first ... sometimes there is only a fragment of a melody ... sometimes it is the entire melody that has a feeling and no words AT ALL... we never know ... sometimes we just talk about a scene until something pops into our head ...

The process of creation is an extraordinary experience. Writing a Libretto is a lot of fun. Creating a story that works and then setting it to prose ... WOW! Glad I showed up to work. Who would want to miss that?