Oscar And Grammy Award Winner Stephen Schwartz Talks 'SEANCE' Opera To NY Post

Award-winning composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz is featured in Cindy Adams newest NY POst article. In it, Schwartz talks about his new opera, "Séance on a Wet Afternoon."

Schwartz tells Adams the show come about "because The Granada in Santa Barbara was commissioned to do this and a friend suggested me. I'm an aficionado." The songwriter added, "I've always entertained the idea of writing an opera. I actually wrote a really bad one in college."

"Doing this is not just a little scary. It's daunting. This is a real opera, not a musical. It's rewriting and rewriting. The hardest part is getting it down the first time. Simply dealing with orchestration was a steep learning curve. I'd never done anything on this scale. I had to learn fast. I thought I'd only first do an outline. But I couldn't. My Broadway process has been: write the song in my head, work it out on the piano, play it into a computer. But this accompaniment's so complex you can't do a section mentally then finish with two hands on the piano. I had to do the entire libretto first. I couldn't just get a tune in my head."

To read the entire NY Post article, click here.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon, with Music and Libretto by Stephen Schwartz, is based on the novel by Mark McShane and screenplay by Bryan Forbes. In May, New York City Opera presented a reading of 'Seance' as part of its acclaimed VOX: Showcasing American Opera series. The performance was conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky and included a cast featuring Lauren Flanigan as Myra Savage, Jane Shaulis as Mrs. Wintry, Jennifer Zetlan as Miss Rose, Theodore Chletsos as Mr. Bennett, Andrew Oakden as Mr. Cole, Michael Zegarski as Bill Savage, Michael Marcotte as Irish Tenor, Jonathan Makepeace as Arthur, along with members of the New York City Opera Chorus.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a psychic and her husband plan an elaborate kidnapping scheme to legitimize her powers. The piece was commissioned by Opera Santa Barbara for a world premiere in Fall 2009.

Stephen Schwartz's remarkable musical theater career makes him an ideal choice to join this extraordinary group of recipients. Born in New York City on March 6, 1948, Mr. Schwartz studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School of Music while in high school and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968 with a B.F.A. in Drama. Upon coming back to live in New York City, he went to work as a producer for RCA Records, but shortly thereafter began to work in the Broadway theater. Mr. Schwartz has contributed music and/or lyrics to Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show, The Baker's Wife, Working (which he also adapted and directed), Personals, Rags, Children of Eden and the current Broadway hit, Wicked. He collaborated with Leonard Bernstein on the English texts for Bernstein's MASS and wrote the title song for the play and movie Butterflies are Free. For children, he has written songs for two musicals, Captain Louie and Geppetto & Son. For films, he collaborated with Alan Menken on the songs for Disney's "Enchanted" as well as the animated features "Pocahontas" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and wrote the songs for the DreamWorks animated feature "The Prince of Egypt." He has released two CDs of new songs entitled "Reluctant Pilgrim" and "Uncharted Territory," and a book about his career, "Defying Gravity", has recently been released by Applause Books. Under the auspices of the ASCAP Foundation, he runs musical theater workshops in New York and Los Angeles and is also a member of the Council of the Dramatists' Guild. Mr. Schwartz is the recipient of three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards and four Drama Desk Awards.

For more information, visit www.stephenschwartz.com.