|
Playwright Mark Medoff and I developed Rose in Flames by reimagining our earlier opera, Sara McKinnon. Audiences responded enthusiastically to university productions of Sara McKinnon in Las Cruces and Boulder, but we wanted to create a more focused and powerful opera by simplifying the story. We focused more on the principal characters, eliminated several secondary characters, and simplified the plot. This allowed us to increase the time the remaining characters spent revealing their feelings by means of expressive singing.
Our initial effort to revise the opera was workshopped at Utah Festival Opera, and this workshop revealed that the story needed to be still more concentrated and focused. Sadly, Mark Medoff passed away in 2019. In 2020 I received permission from his estate to further rework the libretto and the music in keeping with the aims we had envisioned. This work, as yet untitled, is in progress.
|