ANTINOUS
We are very excited about the continuing progress on Clint Borzoni’s new opera Antinous and Hadrian.
Composer Clint Borzoni, librettist Rochelle Bright, dramaturg Chuck Hudson and I held a nice productive meeting this past week. Clint and Rochelle have spent the summer hammering out a fully detailed synopsis. Rochelle has done brilliant work in fleshing out all of the characters and their relationships with each other, and has also ingeniously created some gripping thematic organization.
The opera will clearly have structure and pacing to its moments of tension and repose. And anyone who has ever worked with Chuck knows that he asks exactly the right questions to take the drama to the next level.
On top of all this impressive work, Clint has composed an orchestral introduction to Act II, scene 1 which did not fail to bring goosebumps on first hearing, second, and third. He and Rochelle have also done extensive revision work on this same scene.
Rochelle is capturing a tone in her use of language that is neither too heightened not too casual, yet this is one of the big questions. So we may bring some performers in next week in order to hear the words in other voices.
This is thrilling work. Please stay tuned for the next chapter of our progress. Very soon we will have a synopsis we can share. Rochelle thought to create a concise one-pager, as well as a thorough detailed one, which will smoothly feed into the actual sung text.
