Questions of the month
I answer here the questions sent to the confidential e-mail address you have been provided with. Today it will be very quick. No questions or observations have been asked.
Chronicle of writing
This month I shall entitle this column "chronicle of non-writing"; I stopped myself from composing in order to write these columns, and especially to begin preparing a recording debut. I do not know if the supplied until now have interested you, but I am very aware that without sound illustration, these comments are insufficient. On the other hand, this month you can usefully revise what I have already written, because sound illustrations are present and are going to take all their direction after a second reading (even if the first quality of the music is to be able to do without any comment). But do not get too impatient all the same: to listen to an extract of an opera while it's being written is not something that's done very often!
I thus recorded, and took advantage of it to refine a certain number of writing details, eliminated such instruments which were pointlessly weighing down a certain measure, modified after listening to some indications of velocity, etc…
The second reason was because I needed to record something concerning the interpreters. I was rather aware of the honour which they gave me by agreeing to sing on an undefined day a work which hadn't even been written, that I it was difficult for me to be thrifty with this premature work. Today these interpreters arrange the first 22 minutes of the score, as well as the corresponding orchestral recording. Finally, this recording will allow me maybe also to interest the singers who still haven't been called (there is still another baritone bass - or a bass-, a light tenor, and an operatic baritone missing). Well done by me, nobody forced me to write an opera for 8 characters plus choirs (ah yes, even the choirs are still missing, but their intervention will concern only the second act. I thus have plenty of time).
I finally resumed the writing some days ago and began the composition of two, without a doubt, major scenes in this work (they were important at first in the life of Padre Pio!). Such as I show them, they conform enough with what he said about it himself.
I had to "compress" the time and the events a little. Here is the synopsis of both scenes being written: having fallen asleep in his church, in his dream he is visited by the Virgin Mary, then wakes with a start as a mysterious character appears in front of him, with bloody hands and torso. We understand that this character is now Christ himself: "I am the one who, on the cross, paid for the sins of man". Some moments later, the body of Padre Pio reproduces the same bloody stigmata.
Finished scenes (and their approximate timing)
Prelude (5 min 45 sec)
Scene 1 (8 minutes)
San Giovanni Rotondo Monastery, Inside the church (with a statue - human size - of the Virgin, wrapped in a blue veil). Certain numbers of people wait to be able to confess to Padre Pio. Angela, one of these people, stirs and wants to get up. She eventually calls to the monk to beg him to cure her husband, in danger of death. "Everybody knows (she says) that you have already carried out a number of miracles". The monk refuses at first then invites Angela to pray with him, before telling her to return to her home where good news awaits her there
Scene 2 (8 minutes)
A character dressed in black appears in the twilight. His first words clarify the direction which I intend to give to this character's mission (Padre Pio speaks about him in his mails, by indicating him as: "the Man in Black"): .... (see next page)
