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The Steiny Road To Operadom
Unlimited Publishing
Category:
Arts/Entertainment
Publisher: Unlimited Publishing
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 310
Copyright: Oct 1, 2007
ISBN-13: 9781588321923
The Steiny Road to Operadom, written in a style anyone can read, is a collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a contemporary libretto with a time line of events that preceded the birth of a new opera about Gertrude Stein. This entertaining book provides a roadmap for creative collaborators and performing arts educators. It is a history of American opera framed by the collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. With comments from opera luminaries such as Plácido Domingo and Mark Adamo, this unusual reference with a comic flair uniquely answers how to begin, sustain, and complete an opera project. It includes a bibliography and index.
The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is an upcoming collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a working libretto that explores the intersection between poetry and music that proceeds to contemporary opera — the most complex genre of the performing arts. The collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson as well as the more contemporary collaboration between poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield are the context for this study in process.
This book is written in a style that anyone can read, and explains how a current day artist can begin, sustain, and complete an opera project. It answers many questions about creating an American opera: what resources are needed, who is involved or should be involved, what are the obstacles? It discusses commissions, collaborations, community, critics.
A chronology of events that led to the premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On by Alenier and Banfield provides an inside look at the historical development of one American opera. The book provides a road map for creative collaborators and performing arts educators as well as a current day history of American opera and Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s contribution to that art form. The book will also appeal to opera enthusiasts curious about the behind-the-scenes story of contemporary opera, aficionados of Gertrude Stein, and students of feminist studies.
Without pretension, the author reveals a learning process that included becoming a successful first-time librettist and critic. Included in the appendices of The Steiny Road to Operadom are the libretto of her opera, seven reviews of contemporary opera and music theater works, and a list of American opera and music theater recordings.
Excerpt
Travel The Steiny Road to Operadom with the brave, naive Steiny Road Poet, who like Voltaire’s Candide or Carroll’s Alice, dauntlessly ventures into the best of all possible worlds or down dark rabbit holes in a
journey of discovery. What this cubist education tracks is a parallel of the collaboration between opera modernists Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson with current day collaborators, poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, a classical and jazz opera that premiered in 2005 in collaboration with director-dramaturg Nancy Rhodes and Encompass New Opera Theatre. Interwoven interviews with such artists as director Plácido Domingo, composer Ned Rorem, and poet J. D. McClatchy complete the story of how modern day operas are created. Stay alert. The roses encountered along the Steiny Road bear thorns, sharp thorns!
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