5 Quotes by Mark Adamo

When I finally found that notion of Jo, I found the structure of the opera,

From the late Classical period and more so in Romantic and Modern opera, the weight settled into the orchestra, with the voices as a free obbligato above it, ... That just drives me crazy. I want the vocal line to be as much the core as the bass line. I want to create the illusion that the voice generates harmony, color, line, everything.

They are all changing, and Jo is resisting,

I approached opera from the theater side, ... I used to rail against the clichs of the form, all those sopranos in nightgowns dying in Act 2. So what do I have in my first opera? A soprano in a nightgown dying in Act 2.

This is a love story with six protagonists, ... And it's about a girl on the cusp of womanhood, a girl who is smart enough to realize she's happy, but not smart enough to know that everything must change.