Sixth meeting: Sorry, it's not going to be a musical

Musiikkitalo and its "terde" as we call it in Finnish.

Our sixth meeting took place in Musiikkitalo. Or rather outside of it, for the weather was glorious and meeting inside would've been a crime against sunshine. We were all there drinking (bad) coffee, and for the first time our new singer, Anna-Maija, joined us to talk schedules, politics and art.

Also Start-up Opera's new honorary member, three-month-old Helmi, was present for the first time. She participated mainly by eating and sleeping, and blinked approvingly at our grand plans.

There were scheduling issues to be fixed, again, and an approximate performance date was decided on. Taking into consideration our director escaping to Lapland, a marriage, and the fastest possible pace of composition, we set our minds to February or beginning of March. I will now take this to the authorities who will probably tell us that everything's booked and we'll have to perform this in a toilet. But hope lives on.

After scheduling issues came the reality: composing will start right now. It is happening. For real. So Milla, Anna-Maija and Itzam agreed on some rules - the fine line between comfortable and possible for human voice. Itzam has been strictly forbidden to compose difficult things, even though nobody actually believes he'll restrain himself from doing so. Composers are mysterious creatures, but they certainly have never been famous for making things too easy for performers. Well, seriously writing, one of our goals is to produce an opera that would be achievable to other performers too. This shouldn't be a work that's performed once and then forgotten, but rather something that would be easy enough - yet interesting enough - to be taken up again by somebody else. Usable music, one might call it. (I'm not saying we're doing a musical, sorry. It'll probably not be on any karaoke playlist anytime soon.)

And what next? We wait for Itzam to work his magic. In the meantime I write more grant applications and the others go hunting for helpers such as set and costume designers - all those people who know a lot about a specific something that we know little about. And then it's November and we all meet again, a few steps closer to an opera.

Fifth meeting and a soprano hunt

Some serious libretto reading going on.

It has been an eventful summer, full of things such as rain and other projects. Also I have found the need to reload my batteries and prepare for battle (aka. start of the school year). And so it happens that we had a meeting on the 18th of May and I'm writing about it now.

Everyone was there on our fifth meeting, again in Milla's place. For the first time we read through the entire libretto - lacking just some finishing touches. It was all very exciting. All in all the meeting circled around the following three points:

1) Scheduling. Our director announced that next spring he's going to escape to Lapland. So the opening night would have to be sooner than hoped for.

2) Scheduling. Can we actually make this happen? Will the composition be finished on time?

3) A writing crisis. Sometimes there's just too much text.

That day we went our separate ways with varying amounts of optimism and cheerfulness, and all was well. And then the university spat on us. Well, on Iida, in any case. She was accepted to Berlin to study singing, and had to resign from our opera group. We're pretending to be happy for her, because studying singing in Berlin must be completely amazing, fulfilling and every kind of wonderful, but still our hearts are bleeding for losing this eccentric, energetic artist. I tell you, this young lady will be heard of.

So.

That left us one soprano short, and a hunt began. I had long talks with Milla and Itzam about who could be best suited to our group, and who Itzam could most comfortably compose to on such a tight schedule. We all had different opinions and favourites, but one name was on all our lists: Anna-Maija Perttunen. She didn't say yes immediately, but wanted to think about joining us. (Which was wise - we're on a fool's errand trying to change the universe and open the hearts of these humans who have fallen from the grace of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We've got no money, just wild plans and a little time to create a mind-blowing spectacle of an opera.) Eventually Anna-Maija caved in and said yes, and we're going to live happily ever after.

Stay tuned. There are amazing things to come.