The Snow Queen and Other Plans

Like most people who enter graduate school, I had a lot of energy, many resources, and high hopes for success. I decided to write an opera based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen as a thesis project, and I finished the opera, my thesis, and my degree in 2002.

Plans were underway in the university to build a theater as part of a renovation, and the chair of the music department had plans to mount a production of my opera when the renovation was finished--as a way of opening the theater. Thanks to budget impasses in the state, the renovation was delayed. Then the chair of the music department left the university for a position elsewhere. All plans to perform my opera were simply forgotten.

While things were looking positive for a performance, my son Ben and I designed some nifty snow globes to give to people who would have been involved in the production. A box of Snow Queen snow globes is sitting in the garage, and one snow globe is still sitting on my desk. Here's a photo:



And here's a clearer image of the rune that Ben and I designed to go inside:



Fortunately Raoul Ronson of Seesaw Music was interested in publishing the opera. I made friends with Seymour Barab over the piece (we exchanged scores of operas based on the same story to see how the other person handled the malevolence of the Snow Queen's character). My opera won an honor from an organization in Vienna. When Raoul Ronson died, The Snow Queen went to Subito along with the other Seesaw material. But nobody seems to know about it. I think the piece (and the thesis) has some merit.

The entry for The Snow Queen in my thematic catalog blog that has links a couple of recordings of excerpts from the opera.

So, I'm just leaving this post about the opera here for someone to find one of these days. The orchestral score and parts are available for rental from Subito Music. There are piano/vocal scores in a few university libraries. Here's the Subito link to the piano/vocal score.