Towards a new Opera (3)

I am now over 60 minutes through and am steadily working my way down the penultimate page of the libretto. The piece is based on a play by Alan Richardson called When a man knows which has a distinguished performance history, so I hope the opera lives up to it. Just to give you an idea of the differences between opera and the stage, the play is estimated to last 35 minutes whereas the opera will last around 70 minutes, despite having the text trimmed down to the bone.

This still leaves me with the worry that the baritone part might be too long. I think that I need to be more radical in my use of the chorus to provide a pause in the long dialogue between the man and the woman. The problem with this is that it means I need some new text, so I will have to think about it. Having got this far with the piece I have started to think about performance and will start making plans to have a workshop/concert performance in the spring of next year.