Anybody have an opera in their drawer?

[Brian]

I just got an email from the "Bartók Plus Music Festival" in Hungary, saying that they're having an opera composition competition and the winner will be staged at the 2017 festival. Prize of 5500 euros (about US $6000). The deadline, however, is August 22 - just a month away. There are no restrictions on language, length, or style.

If anybody has a spare opera sitting around and wants to submit it to the festival, let me know - I can forward the PDF with all the rules and stuff.

[North Star]

*Looks in the desk drawer*

No, nothing there. Well, there's something, but it's definitely not an opera.

[springrite]

Someone should send in Havergal Brian's Turandot.

[Cato]

I composed an opera using a 19-tone quarter-tone system: the story was my adaptation (in German) of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, where in the original the composer used a quasi-12-tone method a la Schoenberg.

It was a victim of The Purge of 1995, when I decided - not having composed anything for over a decade and seeing no future in it - to destroy everything.

A few things did survive: they had been placed elsewhere.

[(poco) Sforzando]

From 1993-98, I composed an opera set to the Japanese Noh play Momijigari (The Maple Viewing), translated by Meredith Weatherby who was also noted for his translations of Yukio Mishima. The plot: a warrior is seduced by a maiden who turns out to be a demon in disguise, and a god appears to the warrior in a dream to provide him with the enchanted sword to slay the demon. I have found one other translation of this play but it had nowhere the music and poetry of Weatherby's version, which was collected in a Grove Press edition of Three Japanese Plays edited by Earle Ernst. I did this mainly for myself, just for the fun of it, with even less expectation of performance than my abortive efforts as a dramatist. (See the unfortunate results in my other thread on the Composing and Performing board.)

I set the whole libretto verbatim, but since I didn't cut it there were some passages that dragged, and I never got around to orchestrating it. It is relatively tonal, and in some places even parodies Puccini. It was mainly something I did for my own amusement, and I doubt it would go anywhere. This proved academic in any case as Weatherby and Ernst are both long dead and the publisher could not help me find who owned the copyright on the text.

Even so, there are one or two passages I still like.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I just got an email from the "Bartók Plus Music Festival" in Hungary, saying that they're having an opera composition competition and the winner will be staged at the 2017 festival. Prize of 5500 euros (about US $6000). The deadline, however, is August 22 - just a month away. There are no restrictions on language, length, or style.

If anybody has a spare opera sitting around and wants to submit it to the festival, let me know - I can forward the PDF with all the rules and stuff.

I might be able to whack together some Yoko Ono-esque masterpiece of an opera in a few minutes.

[(poco) Sforzando]

There's a 150 Euro application fee; otherwise I might send in my opera as a joke.

[Karl Henning]

There's a 150 Euro application fee [....]

That's a Wagnerian fee scale.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I don't think that entry fee is enticing....not sure if my anti-opera is worth anywhere near that entry fee.

[Cato]

It is inspired by a large combination of works like Scriabin's Mysterium, and David Lynch films.
It features a full choir and a Mahler sized orchestra.

That is some great D.N.A. to have for an opera! 

I composed an opera using a 19-tone quarter-tone system: the story was my adaptation (in German) of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, where in the original the composer used a quasi-12-tone method a la Schoenberg.

It was a victim of The Purge of 1995, when I decided - not having composed anything for over a decade and seeing no future in it - to destroy everything.

A few things did survive: they had been placed elsewhere.

With luck, your opera will not meet the fate of mine!   0:)

[jochanaan]

*looks* Nope, no opera in my drawer. Or in my drawers.