In 1986, I woke up one morning and had the ideas for a series of poems. Later, as I wrote them down, I realized they shared a common theme. They involved a mythical kingdom and centered around a story of a princess who fell in love with a unicorn. That didn’t strike me as odd, as I often got writing ideas while I was sleeping. Unicorns had become trendy in marketing to little girls back then and still today. I held no fascination for unicorns myself, but the story required them. After a decade of experience working in local theatre, including musicals, I recognized that my piece was going to be a musical. In that case I needed a composer to set the lyrics to music. Although I sang, I never learned to read music and certainly could not compose it. I would need an editor and workshop to flesh out something this ambitious.
Working every day, I made time to draft the story that held it together. I went this way and that with no guidance and just tried different characterizations. I found a local recording studio to set down one of the songs on cassette. I wanted to begin to jumpstart what I wanted for the music. Finally, I placed an ad in Ms. Magazine, a popular feminist journal of the day. I would be searching for a talented female composer. I thought it would increase the salability of the work.
After a series of replies that ended in nice conversations but no fit, I got a letter from a man in Florida. He told me he knew a good young composer who was Austrian. He felt I could contact this composer, that he would be great for my project. Monsieur M, as I’ll call him, had just moved to Paris to take a job working in French television in Paris, France. He spoke English also. Within days I had sent a story synopsis, some dialogue and two songs on cassette tape to an address in Paris.
Phone calls back and forth were difficult with the time difference. Then there was the heavy accent for me to work through. After two weeks he reviewed all the materials and accepted his project. He said he would be excited to work on it. Almost immediately my musical turned into an operetta. Mr. M. had been trained in the Motzarteum in Austria , heavily into classical works and composition. But, he advised me he was also studying all modern composers, like Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom of the Opera), and that the work would have a mix of classical and modern music.
Without much delay I flew to Paris in late February of 1987. Six days later, I didn’t want to come home. Nearly one full afternoon was spent in a church that was a multi-level library on the banks of Seine. A winding staircase led to new landing spaces with chairs and a different subject. M brought me to a middle eastern party where I belly danced for a few francs after dinner. Like a tourist I walked the streets of Paris, meeting sketch artists, bread ladies and musicians. He took me shopping and I ordered our meats myself from the local butcher. (My high school French came in very handy.) Meanwhile a new musical score was being born in little “flat” above cobbled streets.
I left full of dreams but came back to a lot of hard work. M. was set to come to New York in May 1988 when I had time to audition the roles for the workshop and begin staging bits of the first and second act. I was able to finance it all from the sale of my dad’s company stock, which I had held in my name for many years. From the machine shop, I had my money for an operetta.
The workshop was a great boost for my confidence. I received press from a number of TV and radio stations, met the newest Brazilian composer from the Symphony, and was announced as director and author of a new “workshopped” libretto.
As much fun as the work shop turned out to be, it’s was yet another reality to launch a professional operetta. Once I paid Mr. M and the workshop was over, he flew back to Paris. The music he wrote for my operetta helped to launch his composing career. I managed to get the song at the close of act one performed by the chorus at my old high school and send out a few proposals to try for backers for a professional production. But I wanted to keep singing, acting and writing other things rather than shut myself down as the sole promoter of that big work. There are files for “Cartazan”, and somewhere pictures of my trip to Paris. Life for me is a journey with multiple destinations. My thrill is and would always be travelling to a new place and discovering new things and people. And that is what I have done and keep doing, within a smaller radius. And I still am thinking about that princess and her unicorn.
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