Workshop for learning new tools. Guide to build a story, drama progression, rhythm, and conflict.
Image: Luis Nolasco.
René Chargoy / Gaceta UNAM. Verónica Musalem gives a workshop in which she proposes new tools to write a contemporary opera script. During four sessions she works with young people who already have previous literary or musical productions. In the Multimedia Classroom of the Nezahualcóyotl Auditorium of the University Cultural Center she deals with how to build a conflictive story, the dramatic progression, and rhythm, because in opera, she says, ‘there needs to be a story to tell and the plot is important.’ Having written 34 plays and having 25 years as a writer, the playwright graduated from UNAM’s Philosophy and Letters Faculty specifies that to write an opera script you need to be aware of the following: ‘tell a strong story so your plot doesn’t dissolve; you need to understand that you’ll write a text for being sung, without an extensive length. You need to know that a performer can’t recite long sung texts and, therefore, you need to use poetic fragments with rhythm, cadence, musicality, and be aware of the fact that you’re writing for a composer who’ll put music into your text’. Strong plots. She says the traditional realism in an opera script is generally a failure, consequently, it’s necessary to explore new tendencies that can allow building strong plots to deal with themes such as war, love, and treason. ‘Words have their rhythm, melody, and cadence. It’s marvelous to realize it and start to see how you can play with the different languages of music, which you start to learn when there’s strong and honest communication with the composer and you start to get to know their style. To create provocative fond characters, who are in movement, who search and want something, is one of the major challenges for any playwright. Musalem has it deeply clear and her opera script writing is built flawlessly. Owning 25 scripts and in process of one else. In 2005 as a part of the Music and Scene Festival, she wrote Lazos (Bonds), with music by Mariana Villanueva, as a result of a theater laboratory in which four playwrights were reunited to create musicalized texts with the narrative axis of Mexico City. In 2009 she wrote El juego de los insectos (The insects’ game), with music by Federico Ibarra. In 2018 it premiered orchestrated in the Fine Arts Palace. In 2010 she wrote Antonieta, an opera about Antonieta Rivas Mercado, a highly dramatic character, with Ibarra’s music too. It opens the scene with her suicide in Notre Dame and it closes with it as well. It was an exhaustive investigation to arrive at her version of this famous woman while understanding her career. Then a children’s opera called En la tumba de los dioses (At Gods’ grave) was made by the initiative of the stage director Luis Martín Solís, who specialized in drama for children and operas too. The composer was Ricardo Cortés. Recently she wrote Clitemnestra o el aullido de la noche (Clytemnestra or the night’s howl) for Jorge Torres Sáenz, in which love and betrayal are dealt. The story takes place in a refugee camp in the desert. Early this year she collaborated again with Federico Ibarra to create Las brujas de Salem (Salem’s witches), a free version script. She has already outlined the characters: two female painters, one lives in Paris, the other one, in Mexico. Young writers and musicians will be attracted by the discovery of opera’s narrative. They will learn how to write scripts in which dramatic action, singing, and musical accompaniment will harmonize together, through this workshop that will take place during the IM-PULSO Festival 2018. The experience promises to be a ‘bel canto d’amore’ for writing.