Well over a year after I had my first meetings with my librettist, the time has finally come for the premiere of my short story opera, The Loving Mother. My year got off to a rough start – that also ended up having an unexpectedly long tail – so it feels especially rewarding now to have some genuinely exciting things going on.
This Monday, I and Tora, my librettist, attended the dress rehearsal of Short Stories V at the Royal Swedish Opera and we were both floored by how everything had come together. Her text, my music, the excellent direction by Jonas Österberg Nilsson as well as the clever set design, and especially how our four singers combined it all and brought the characters to life.
Even though I both know exactly how the story goes and am of course ridiculously biased, I was really moved by their performance. I overheard others attending the dress rehearsal talking similarly amongst themselves (hopefully unaware of who was involuntarily eavesdropping).
It is a genuine blessing to work with such fantastic people. As for Tora, I hope we will get more opportunities to work together in the future. If nothing else, I suppose we’ll have to try and make those opportunities happen.
If you would like to go yourself, and you happen to be in or around Stockholm, Sweden, there are still tickets available for some of the performances. As of right now, there are even two available seats for tonight! There is an unknown but apparently healthier number of tickets left for Wednesday 6/4, Sunday 6/8 and the final performance on Tuesday 6/10.
The Loving Mother is only the first of three short story operas. The dress rehearsal also excited me about how well the three works go together in the show. Ours is a dark and dramatic work; the second, The Rehearsal, is much more light-hearted and humorous; and the third, Wild Bird, has clear aspects of both. Even though there was no coordination between us, there ended up being some thematic connections between the three stories as well.
The Opera recorded short video introductions to the three operas as well as a presentation by the director (they are in Swedish, but you might be able to get auto-generated English subtitles through YouTube). Introductions to the other two operas are available on the Royal Swedish Opera’s YouTube channel.
Tonight is opening night.
I will be wearing a fancy suit, a nice tie and polished shoes. I think my fiancée will be wearing a lovely dress, too (at least she talked about one last night).
On the inside, though, I will be as excited and amazed as that 17-year-old was back in 2002, he who had written music to a popular and well-received freeware computer game.
Many things change. Our cells die and are replaced by new ones constantly. We grow as people. But some things never change. And honestly, I hope that some of those things never will.