Thinking outside of the box

Reading other people’s blogs on their paper progress has been fascinating for me. What I love about this class is the amount of diversity of opinion and interest within the group. These presentations are going to be awesome!

In my search for sources, I was delighted to find a video of the original Metropolitan Opera production of “The Ghosts of Versailles”. It gave me quite a bit of insight into the work, as well as an appreciation for its conception (It was written expressly to be premiered by the Metropolitan Opera). Reading the libretto and watching the video, I started to notice that while many aspects of the work seem explicitly theatrical (in many ways, the work is a satire of the institution that is opera), many other aspects of the work seem very film-oriented. I was inspired by all of our discussions about the confluence of film and opera in recent times and decided to focus my creative project on turning the work into an opera for film. I believe that the fantastical elements of the work, while a pain-and-a-half for a theater to try and convey, are almost commonplace effects in film and I feel that they would be extremely effective in a film setting. For example, in the second act, the Beaumarchais character of the ghost-world steps into the opera he has created and becomes human in the process. In the theater that takes a large leap of faith on the part of the audience; however, how many films has one seen where something like that happens? Being a product of this time period and (before this work) not primarily an opera composer, I think John Corigliano shows a large affinity for filmic effects. This is all to say that for my creative project, I am working on doing some preliminary story-boarding of the two arias which I have analyzed for my paper. I think the trick in doing so will be to figure out how to preserve the theatrical nature of the work so that the satire can shine through.

[Side note: In my search for a score of John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles”, I found that the one and only copy I could get access to is located at the performing arts branch of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. It is a part of their research collections, meaning that I had to check my bag and coat and enter a sealed viewing room (they are really careful about this resources). I put in my request and a librarian went into the hidden depths of the library and emerged with a box about 2 feet wide and 3 feet long that contained an unbound orchestral score of the opera. So cool. I can’t get over it.]