ANIMAL FARM

I have felt the remarkable stage potential of the Animal Farm already after the first reading. My friends told me they understood it to be a story talking of the events in Soviet Russia. For me it was, above all, a satirical raising of questions relating to the faith of noble ideas that are born in heads of inspired individuals in certain moments.
The Animal Farm, with its strength and genius of artistic intuition, gives us reason to think: is it natural to the human race that it is incapable of realising high ideas (social, national, religious...)
Transforming the novel Animal Farm into an opera libretto, demanded the insertion of a Narrator who is leading us through the events. With time, during my composing, this character has evolved into an editor-speaker of TV-news.
He-like Orwell's Big Brother-manipulates the events and in his own way "shapes" history...The same thing had to be done with the singing parts and how the characters will be visualised. Since they are opera singers, their transformation into the animal characters was achieved with costumes or associations rather than with real masks.
In 2005 he adapted a song from the opera "Deep, deep Sorrow" for mezzosoprano, choir and piano, it was premiered on MARCH 12, the same year.
"At the end: Sorrow. Deep, deep Sorrow... It is the most exciting moment in Orwell's Animal Farm. The Day is wonderful. Never was our Farm so beautiful! Animals in state of shock gather around wise Clower and can't understand: Our blood is spilt. They are Cruel. Brutal. Merciless. Our dreams and hopes have drowned in blood... The Farm is so beautiful... Deep, deep, Sorrow...