Our Own Lives - an Opera in One Act

To be premiered Feb. 7, 2008 at Oberlin College's Wilder Main Space.

The story, lyrics, and music were all written during the rehearsal period - 31 days. There are heavy pop-music influences in several of the songs, and the famous Australian song "Waltzing Matilda" is quoted.

Libretto by Lydia Gordon

From the program:

"SYNOPSIS

Following her carefree half-sister Sophie’s unfortunate Australia-related hospitalization, repressively responsible Sasha Russell is called to Sydney and away from their ailing father to take care of her older sibling. Through the course of Sasha’s visit, together they deal with their father’s mental illness, personal responsibility, and the search for self and love.

PROGRAM NOTES

Every so often, bad things happen to good people. And every so often, good people do something stupid that lands them in a heap of trouble, but it’s how they conduct themselves once in these situations, not what they did to get there, that truly speaks to their characters. Our Own Lives deals with the inherent conflict involved when two very different people approach one such situation from two very different angles.

In all encounters, be they physical, mathematical, or emotional, the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. For Sasha and Sophie, the encounter is emotional. Both women emerge with perspectives they had not anticipated, but which are still inherently resultant of the direction from which they came to the situation. Throughout the space of one act, the sisters come to new terms with not only each other, but also with the way each defines and interacts with the concepts of maturity, responsibility, burden, and history in terms of her own person.

—Program notes by Lydia Gordon"

THE CAST

Sophie – Caitlin Donnelly, soprano
Sasha – Alexandra Roth, soprano


THE ORCHESTRA

Nelson Wong, flute
Sundari Birdsall, violin
Robin Jenkins, piano

SCENE LIST:

Prologue
I. How Do You…?
II. Connections
III. What About That Time?
IV. Taking Care
V. Checkers
VI. Goodbyes/Connections II

Approx. performance time: 25 minutes

Hmm... are there any other file types you could attach? I don't have finale. Midi maybe?

To bad you just have mus. I would like to hear it.

I don't know how to make MIDIs using Finale 2007. It's only letting me make .aif or .mp3. If you download Finale Notepad, you'll be able to see the score and play the parts.

Some movements have violin/flute along with the piano/voice. I'm still in the middle of scoring.

Saving as a midi is easy, just go to save as and choose to save it as a midi ("Save as type:" option in windows, I forget what it is on a mac). Actually, just by changing the file name (while "saving as") to scene.mid should save it as a midi file.

Here are scores in .pdf format.

And here are MIDI files.

Please do not JUST listen to the MIDI - read along in the score, and keep in mind that for a lot of it, there's significant quasi-recitative rubato.

Have you heard "The Birth of Something" ? It's an opera with a similar kind of idea, not in story line, but in terms of mood and concept.

It's really good stuff for the time you were allotted, but I must say I'm not a fan of recit type pieces. It's a definite stylistic choice that I don't particularly like, but you definently display a lot of knowledge and skill.

I'm also not as much a fan of recit-type opera. I much prefer my scenes as songs. However, like you say, it makes the writing and learning faster, and in the short time period, that's necessary.

wow! Good work!!!