Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant! The Opera!

I've just returned from an amazing ten days in New York City, in which composer Evan Meier and I had an orchestral workshop of our opera Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant at American Lyric Theater. 

We've been working on this commission for several years now.  Writing a full-length opera is no small matter!  But this was a huge leap for us -- our first opportunity to share the piece now that Evan has completed the orchestration.  I LOVE his music!  And our conductor, Andrew Bisantz, brought the best out of our delightful cast of eight singers, and the orchestra.  

Evan and I are so grateful to everyone who has supported our creation of this new family-friendly piece, including Larry Edelson who runs ALT, and commissioned us to write it, our colleagues Theo Popov and Tony Asaro who are working on their own beautiful new opera alongside us, called The Halloween Tree, our mentors Cori Ellison, Paul Morevic, Mark Campbell, and Mark Adamo, maestro Andrew Bisantz, and our glorious singers and orchestra.  It takes a really large village to create a new opera, and we're so lucky to have the continuing support of all of these people as we move forward, doing a few final revisions of the piece now, and searching for an opera company that wants to put this piece on their main stage.  We can't wait to see it fully produced!

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant is an original story that Evan and I created, which mashes up the logical world of Sherlock Holmes with the magical world of Jack and the Beanstalk.  There are angry giants and magic harps and a whole lot of fun for kids and grown-ups alike.  

We even had an announcement of the InsightALT Festival in the New Yorker, which was exciting!  And a nice little feature on our opera written by Gabrielle Ferrari, in her Parterre opera blog, which you can read here. "Readers, it was simply charming— nicely performed and perfect for young audiences without talking down to them or to their older counterparts," she says in her article. She gives lots of love to our delightful singers, and then shares, "I won’t spoil the mystery (hint: Jack didn’t do it), but I will say I found this a captivating 90 minutes... The score is varied and interesting, the libretto funny and full of warmth. The opera quotes were a nice way both the introduce kids to the concept of leitmotiv and to appeal to an opera-nerd audience, with a mix of really famous tunes with some lesser known ones."

Would you like to hear what we've been up to?  Tell your local opera company to bring Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fallen Giant to your community!