Led by ALT Faculty Mentor, composer / librettist Mark Adamo
This is a three-part seminar and workshop occurring on the following dates:
Part I: Saturday, February 27, 2021 @ Noon – 3pm ET
Part II: Saturday, March 13, 2021 @ Noon – 3pm ET
Part III: Saturday, March 27, 2021 @ Noon – 3pm ET
At ALT, we believe the most vivid and compelling operas all have one thing in common: a clear underlying structure that links the music and the text. ALT principal faculty mentor Mark Adamo developed a unique outlining method while writing his first, critically-acclaimed opera, Little Women, which is now exclusively taught as a foundational part of the Composer Librettist Development Program. This process activates, from the outset, the collaborative relationship between composer and librettist through the creation of parallel outlines by each writer before a note of the music or a word of the libretto has been written. Drawing on the teachings of theater legends Konstantin Stanislavski and Uta Hagen, Mark will demonstrate how composers and librettists can create “deaf” and “blind” outlines at the outset of a new project; how those outlines help to strengthen the collaborative relationship; how this technique helps to establish the underlying architecture of a piece in a way that takes into consideration the process of both the composer and the librettist; and how this architecture helps to guide the development of a new opera without restricting the creative process. Through this hands-on workshop, we will discover how Mark used this process with Little Women; how composer/librettist teams at ALT have used this outlining method to inform their work; and will go through the process from the very beginning with workshop participants so that you can learn how to apply the technique to your own work.