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Opera Group Commission

Posted on 04 June 2007

Although I'm working on a much longer-term opera project with ROH2 I've accepted a smaller scale 'mini-commission' from the Opera Group to write a self-contained 5-minute piece that will be played out in shopping centres around the country on their next tour this autumn (apparently Selfridges in London and Manchester are already signed up).

I spent an enjoyable couple of days last month with conductor Patrick Bailey, director John FullJames, librettist Alasdair Middleton and a group of singers developing ideas. I think we broke the world-record for the fastest turn around from blank page (Thursday morning) via libretto creation (Thursday teatime) and score creation (Thursday evening) to fully acted and sung workshop performance (Friday afternoon). It was thrilling and liberating, even if the resulting hastily-composed music produced a marvellously over-the-top Puccini-meets-Bernstein slush-fest.

But I do get the feeling if we're going to stop people dead in their tracks while they're browsing for new chair covers, we'll need something that slaps them around the face a bit. Should be interesting...

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