# the commission an opera game



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Once upon a time there was this fun thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/12316-possible-subjects-new-operas.html.

I want to take that a step further with a sort of game....

I will begin by describing the plot of an opera and the next poster will advise me as to which *LIVING* composer I should commission to compose it, preferably with a word or two about why that composer would be appropriate. Then that poster can describe an opera plot and the next poster will suggest a living composer, and so on....

So, to begin:

_Briseis_. (This is basically the _Iliad_, with my own little improvements.) In the first act she is still a princess, and she says goodbye to her husband and father and brothers as they prepare to defend their city. She prays, but the gods scorn her - from atop the city walls, she sees Achilles kill them. Then she and her mother sing goodbyes to each other, and Achilles kills her mother and takes her as his slave. She curses the gods as she's led off in chains.

In the second act Agamemnon takes her from Achilles. In my version, while she is with Agamemnon, Patroclus tries to comfort her in her distress, and she falls in love with him, so of course she mourns his death and prays for Hector's death. When she hears that Achilles has killed Hector and defiled the corpse, she celebrates Achilles' vengeance, though she still hates him and as he again leads her off in chains she again curses the gods.

The third act begins some time later. Achilles sings of his love for another Trojan princess, Polyxena, who he says is as beautiful as Briseis used to be, and that he used to love Briseis. He departs to marry Polyxena, and Briseis sings that she has prayed for his death many times but the gods ignore her. She still hates him but now at least people consider her a concubine rather than a slave, and at least Achilles is a princely hero, and at least he reminds her of Patroclus. She asks the gods to prevent his marriage to Polyxena. Then we learn that Achilles has been killed by a coward hiding in the bushes, and she is given to an ordinary Greek soldier. As an artistic touch, the singer who played her husband in the first act should also play her husband in this last act, and the music of their lines should be the same! This time Briseis submits to her new slavery without chains, though she sings that even in his death she hates Achilles and still she curses the gods.

Ok, I think that's good. Now, who should compose that fine moral tale?


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Xenakis? :tiphat:


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Xenakis? :tiphat:


Via séance?

I'm thinking someone like Sciarrino, Rihm, George Benjamin, or (watch this cut and paste) Nørgård.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

science said:


> Via séance?
> 
> I'm thinking someone like Sciarrino, Rihm, George Benjamin, or (watch this cut and paste) Nørgård.


Oh oops, my bad, I thought he was still alive. I'd still imagine a fellow Greek composer though, a nationalist project.


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## Katie (Dec 13, 2013)

Billie Joe Armstrong a la American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown: Operas for the modern age!


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