I am very excited to announce that tickets to “Short Stories V”, which includes my opera “Den ömma modern”, are on sale now! The show premieres on May 25th, 2025, and runs until June 10th. If you’re set on a particular date, don’t wait – get your tickets today!
The Royal Swedish Opera first introduced the concept “Short Stories” back in 2016, with a two-pronged idea: Get more brand-new opera works in front of audiences, and mine Sweden’s fertile creative earth for future opera librettists, composers and directors. It is the brainchild of Katarina Aronsson, dramaturge at the Royal Swedish Opera for more than a decade. Thus far, they have premiered twelve different short story operas, in 2016, 2020, 2022 and 2023, respectively. From now on, they aim to make it a biennial thing (so the sixth instalment will be in 2027).
Even though the music and text has been finished for about a month now, there has still been plenty of work left before I can tick the big mental box declaring the project “done”. Tora’s part as the librettist is essentially over, aside from any late-stage questions aimed at her more than me. For me though, as the composer, I still need to deliver the music (and, essentially, the libretto as well) to the musicians.
As I mentioned in last week’s post, I have had the rehearsal score and full score to layout and proofread. I finished the full score last week as planned, and in the process discovered a few minor things in the vocal parts I missed when proofing the rehearsal score. But now both scores are finally delivered to the opera’s librarians.
Every textbook or handbook I have read so far has stressed the importance of getting someone else to proofread as well, to counter your familiarity with your own work. After well over a decade of proofreading both my own scores and texts and consciously developing a critical eye and mind for both, I believe I have become fairly adept at it. But I did find a few inconsistencies in the vocal parts I missed the first time around, that someone else might have caught right away, and another pair of eyes might have spotted even more problematic things than I did.
Nevertheless, I found numerous errors or oddities once I sat down with the scores in front of me, and seeing as everyone else also seem quite happy with the end result (I was particularly proud of the praise I got from the orchestra librarians, as they look at so many scores from various publishers and individual composers) I think I deserve to pat myself at least a couple times on the back.
Still left to make are the player parts, which are as important as the scores (if not more!). I plan on having those done before Christmas. The deadline is not until April next year, but I’d rather just finish the entire project as soon as possible instead of needlessly dragging it out.
In other news, I recently also started a bit of home improvement – although at the moment it looks more like home demolition…
What used to be the gathering room for the parishioners to sit down for a coffee back when it was built as a congregation hall will finally transition completely into the new downstairs living room, with re-insulated floors and outer walls, brand new electrical and ethernet cabling, and more. It’s been a long time coming (I can hardly believe I have lived here for over five years already), but it’s finally happening.
But what you can do right now is to get your tickets to Short Stories V, and perhaps I’ll see you at the opera!