What Happens Next?

The next stages of the Genesis Opera Project.

Once the panel and its advisors have chosen finalists for the GOP 2 workshops, there is still an interviewing process for the teams before the final selection is confirmed. Once that happens, each team will be commissioned to produce a complete libretto and about 15 minutes of music for the workshops.

The workshops are to take place in Spring 2004. As before, a full complement of performers will work through the materials with the creative teams present and the process will culminate in a two-day long presentation of the projects before the panel and an invited audience.

Three operas will then be chosen for full production in 2005. The teams selected will have a year to complete their work, by which time GOP3 will have been launched.

Genesis prides itself in acting as a catalyst in the world of opera and perhaps even as a pressure group to rethink the whole approach to commissioning contemporary works of music theatre.

Our ambition is to make a major contribution to the revitalisation of opera internationally - and to a re-evaluation of the form. We believe that ours is an imaginative new approach to finding creative teams to make new operatic works for a modern audience and to give opportunities to young artists perhaps years ahead of when they might otherwise expect to receive operatic commissions.

At the time of the assessment for the first Genesis Opera Project, it was decided that not six but nine projects merited taking through to the workshop phase. If we were to chose nine operas again in 2003, then by 2005 we would have developed 18 projects through to a significant stage and seen at least 6 through to full production.

Already, another opera from GOP 1, Isidora Žebeljan's Zora D, has been fully commissioned by Genesis as well because of the offer of production by the Netherlands Opera Studio and the Wiener Kammeroper. We have also commissioned Fujio Tamura's opera Cherry Station for development.

If we can keep up this level of success, then by the end of the third and fourth Genesis Opera Project cycles we should be helping substantially to rethink and re-evaluate the questions of how and why one creates new operas.