The war is just there to get Dad off stage, ... 'Little Women' is not about war, it's not about poverty, it's not about a woman struggling to become a writer in a world dominated by men.
They are all changing, and Jo is resisting.
From the late Classical period and more so in Romantic and Modern opera, the weight settled into the orchestra, with the voices as a free obbligato above it, ... That just drives me crazy. I want the vocal line to be as much the core as the bass line. I want to create the illusion that the voice generates harmony, color, line, everything.
When I finally found that notion of Jo, I found the structure of the opera.
This is a love story with six protagonists, ... And it's about a girl on the cusp of womanhood, a girl who is smart enough to realize she's happy, but not smart enough to know that everything must change.
I approached opera from the theater side, ... I used to rail against the clichs of the form, all those sopranos in nightgowns dying in Act 2. So what do I have in my first opera? A soprano in a nightgown dying in Act 2.
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