Monday, February 1, 2010

One of those days...

Its been one of those busy days where a lot of things happened, and at the end you don't feel you've accomplished much. I spent a large portion of the day pouring through the Jephtha score and making final decisions about cuts. Of course Handel operas can be extremely long (yesterday I did cuts for Giulio Cesare which clocks in at almost four hours of music, and I needed it down to 2.5). The oratorios aren't much better; and more, since they were written as concert pieces, a lot of the music is contained within spectacular choruses that don't do much for the action.

I'm a little unsure about large cuts, but in both of these cases outside pressures require the score be cut down. One of the greatest challenges is to still tell the same story without all the music. Baroque purists would urge against cutting da capos, and would prefer that the whole aria be cut instead, the same for internal cuts. BUT...in the real world, the dramatic world, I need most of those movements in order to tell the story. If I cut half the arias, I cut half the story. So it becomes a painful and long process of making delicate and not across-the-board cuts. Also, in both cases, I'm doing some radical things with the stories, which means the cuts are even more unconventional. It took a long time...

It was an encouraging day in other aspects. I was asked to direct two seperate and innovative new music projects. Both of these have a lot of depth and possibility. I look forward to exploring them further, and talking about them here on the blog once things are a little more clear. One in particular is the wonderful combination of philosophical substance, and marketing "sex" appeal.

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