Monday, November 29, 2010

Mountain Mamma

Here I am in Virginia at the home of my folks. I came in for American Opera Theater's "Butterfly" and "Harawi", which have been cancelled. BUT...as the tickets were already purchased and it was a chance to be home for Thanksgiving I came anyway. I haven't been home to Christiansburg in a long time, actually, and it is as beautiful as ever no matter how much changes, the essence still remains. I'm also supposed to be using this time as a chance to dig in "La Voix Humaine", a piece for which I'm gaining a great deal of respect and with which I'm stumped for answer, and also to start work on "Two Caravans", and opera to be based on the awarding winning novel of the same title. It is a funny and poignant look at the horrors of immigration in the UK.

I have to admit I haven't started on any of that. I've piled myself down with book I should have read long ago and never got to: "Pensees" of Pascal, "The Consolation" of Boethius, "Inferno" of Dante, "Orlando" of Virginia Wolfe, and poems of John Donne. It is also COAA time, and we are chosing singers and making offers. I have yet to actually be there for the auditions, so I work remotely with Sophie to choose numbers and particulars. This year we are going to run a similar program in Lucca. It is called Accademia Europea Dell'Opera, note the acronym please (a prize to whoever can tell me what it is). The program will be half North Americans and half Europeans, and so we are making the N.A. offers now.

Busy times and I can shake the feeling that I'm being lazy and not getting much done. Argh!!!!!

2 comments:

aw said...

"singer" what's my prize? :)

timothy nelson said...

well, you already have my eternal love, but NO!. I didn't actually come up with it, Simone Luti did, but the closest English word we have for it is "orator", but it is the word used in Italian for Homer and Virgil and great epic poets of yore (you know how I love my Greeks).