MY LIBRETTO
WHERE THE PHOENIX FLIES –
the story of Titian’s Venetian Garden
Fable or historical fact? Our new opera is something of both, relaying 500 years of Venice’s history through the lens of Titian’s garden and the exceptional people who gave themselves, their dreams and their sweat, to its inspiration, its making, its re-making.
The opera’s thematic arc is one of transformation: flourish, perish, resurge – as people do, as gardens and cities do. As do Phoenixes.
It becomes rapidly apparent that the opera’s narrator/provocateur, this mythical, all-knowing and ever-indomitable bird we observe nesting in Titian’s garden, has a significant message for our time of climate crisis. Negativity, it demands, must be rejected to create an environment resilient to today’s daunting eco-threats.
Our opera is intended for all but makes a special plea to young people: alerting them to listen and absorb, channelling the contributions they propose as they champion future possibilities and use their vigour to seize opportunities, act now.Act I opens in the mid-16th century, an age of gold for ‘most-serene’ Venice, with Maestro Titian at the height of his artistic glory. We witness him grapple with new directions in his work before hosting the elite of Renaissance creativity in the lagoon-side garden of splendour he’s designed, a green place of unique beauty.A dark Act II demonstrates the garden’s extraordinary stubborn capacity for survival – despite the harsh suffering history has in store for the city’s people and its fabric: plague, occupation, conflict, ransack and theft, natural disaster.In Act III a 21st century new dawn foregrounds Julia, now the garden’s custodian, as she confronts head-on the impact of our era’s fearsome environmental challenges.
At the Phoenix’s insistent behest she’s convinced to pledge radical action to salvage the failing garden and restore its fragile beauty. Her efforts succeeding, the bitter soil turned sweet again, Titian’s garden’s Venetian legacy will be ensured for all time. Joyously, sounding out a last triumphant message of eternal re-birth, the Phoenix, aflame in its death throes, soars away on a final flight, the cycle of its sacrifice complete.
MID-SEPTEMBER PROGRESS REPORT
I’m advancing with my storytelling, over halfway into Act II. My writing is in an irregular metre free verse style, which creates a measured conversational cadence for the libretto, the effect of this enlivened by in-line as well as end-line rhyming.Here’s an example from an aria from early on in the Introduction.During an encounter in Ca’ Tiziano’s garden the Phoenix addresses Julia, the modern-day custodian and ‘saviour’ of the ravaged garden:
You’ll plant and hoe,
weed, save the seed,
enrich the soil,
water, water, water
Oh, the toil!
Back-bending, how you’ll ache at day’s ending
But Julia, imagine this!
as it wakes and each green leaf breaks, your garden gains
For all your pains
we’ll have it back, its beauty on full show
The entire opera, focussed closely as it is on the physical reality of the garden at Ca’ Tiziano: its past, present and future, is pervaded by the creative influence of Maestro Titian.
In mid-September 2026 it’s a cool space, green shade, ivy-clad enclosing walls and lush lawn welcome in the continuing heat, somehow capturing a perpetual breeze from the northern lagoon regardless of the time of day.
I’m enjoying immensely capturing how the opera’s narrative inherently mirrors Titian’s larger-than-life approach to everything he painted. One way that his genius was expressed was in how his brushwork transformed real, raw nature into high art, always maximising its dramatic potential. From his hundreds of completed canvases it’s evident how Titian generated excitement and daring, emotions and attitudes challenging and reflecting the dynamism of the Venice in which he lived and worked.His genius now transcending that time and place, our endeavour in the context of Venice today is to add an element of fantasy, joy and positivity to that energy for a production of music and song for the stage.
And then we have a larger vision for our operatic celebration of the sensuality, the colours, textures, cycles and seasons of a living garden. As I write the libretto I’m aware that there’s a challenge to be met by WHERE THE PHOENIX FLIES, beyond that is, showing the garden as a place where human drama interacts with nature and inspires wonder. And beyond merely relishing the exuberance and entertainment value of the opera’s fabulous Phoenix provocateur spelling out the garden’s changing circumstances within the span of 500 years of Venice’s history, followed by its C21st saving and re-making as ecologically viable, economically sustainable.
This challenge is the shaping of the story of Titian’s garden so that its future dimension, is revealed, so that its story is characterised as serving a profound activist purpose.
The story cycle of the Phoenix giving its all - but resurging to return and engage again in struggle - is a foundational one and from it, I am drawing out my emphasis on optimism and on engendering courage about the flourishing future that can spring from a creative re-birth.
Building on this, my aim is that the opera has clear communication lines that will access young people. I’ll make sure this meaningful contact is established via the incorporation into its story of their inventive messaging and pro-active climate-focussed decision-making, aspects which will both reflect and impact the urgently critical environmental issues of our day.
Our focus is on Venice’s ‘belwether’ position in this global struggle, with particular reference to the uniquely vulnerable situation of the city’s green spaces, confronting the rising tides and wild windforces of a heating planet.
Our opera production being located here in Venice while using culture to encourage a vigorous engagement with the protection of the city’s physical heritage is an initiative that’s as innovative as it is important.
WHERE THE PHOENIX FLIES is positioning itself to channel youth climate change concern. This is the greater story for which we’re reaching out. Encouraging the dynamic engagement and leadership that will shift the emphasis of the eco-activism message away from despair – or disruption – the song it sings will affirm and support adoption of a concrete lifelong cultural and physical stewardship of our planet. Keeping Venice’s profoundly human aesthetic spirit alive while ensuring its structural preservation: a fitting new perspective for the thrilling medium of contemporary opera.
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