As It Unfolds

“As It Unfolds” was written in Narni, Italy at the same festival that commissioned my first opera, a one-act called Pietà. A year after the Covid outbreak had delayed Pietà’s premiere, the opera was finally opening, and alongside its planned partner Suor Angelica, by Puccini. Like Pietà, “As It Unfolds” features a spinning out of Suor Angelica’s themes, most obviously the Dies Irae-like bells that open the opera. It is built out of these bells un- and refurling at an industrious tempo—like an ostinato (rather contrarily) in constant development—as swells of harmony propose exchange between D minor and major. There is a beautiful red room, a music salon, at the top of Narni’s theater, where I was rehearsing the opera daily. Throwing open the windows and their red curtains would allow in the gale-force sound of the local church bells from a tower just across the small street. One time, in rehearsal, the bells rang out perfectly in sync with those called for in the opera, and in precisely the right key. My inner ear, buried somewhere in Pietà // Suor Angelica, and my outer ear collided, and this inspired the explosions of sound scattered with direction throughout “As It Unfolds”.