Opera To Go 2009 Workshop Pics

For the first two weeks of January, I was at Tapestry New Opera Works playing for the workshop of Opera To Go 2009. A workshop of a new operatic work is quite different from staging rehearsals, since the operatic works have not yet reached their final form. Much work is done with tweaking words and music so that when the work finally goes to production, it will have reached a high level of polish and a much more successful dramatic trajectory than a work hot off the press that hasn't had such a fine-tuning.

Deeply engaged in musical and dramatic thought in the picture at left are (clockwise from the piano) myself, Musical Director Wayne Strongman, Director/Dramaturge Tom Diamond, and Stage Manager Isolde Pleasants-Faulkner. You can see the entire slideshow of Opera To Go workshop action shots at Tapestry's Inside the New Works Studio blog.