Musicalising the Everyday or Making the Everyday Operatic
Leith, O. (2024). Musicalising the Everyday or Making the Everyday Operatic. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, Guildhall School of Music & Drama)
Abstract
This is a practice-based research project about an operatic adaptation of Gus Van Sant’s film Last Days (2005). The opera was written in collaboration with Librettist and Director, Matt Copson and was the culmination of a three year Doctoral Composer-in-Residence scheme between the Guildhall School of music & Drama and the Royal Opera House. It was premiered in October 2022 in the ROH Linbury Theatre.
The film is a fictionalised account of the final days of Kurt Cobain. Last Days follows Blake, a successful musician, returning from rehab to his home, facing a series of interruptions before his suicide. The research — presented here as a commentary, score and supplementary materials — explores my fascination with the everyday, a fixation of most of my recent previous work- and exploring how we might approach the everyday to make compelling theatre or art. This also involves discussion of wide ranging contexts from Musique Concrète to Film adaptation.
The research explores four main and interlinked strands: How can an interest in ‘the everyday’ and mundanity (sonically and thematically) make compelling art, how might we make something ‘dramatic’ from something intrinsically anti-dramatic? How might a sustained focus on the permeable boundaries between diegetic and non-diegetic music yield innovative expressive possibilities in contemporary opera? Can we create analogues for the camera’s gaze in an adaptation of film to opera? How can we smuggle the nonlexical
sounds of the everyday - the grunts and bumps, into opera?
These experiments involve extensive use of electronic sampling and real-world sounds. I explain, warts and all, key moments in the opera in relation to the research areas and seek to give an honest and holistic account of the creation of the opera. The opera poses a thought experiment: what if every possible quotidian moment, down to boiling a kettle, was music?
| Publication Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study N Fine Arts N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR |
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