Veronika Krausas was born in Sydney, Australia and raised in Canada. Her works have been performed in Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany (at the Darmstadt New Music Festival by Music Fabrik), the Netherlands and Romania. Show more
She has received commissions from the Canada Council for ERGO Projects, the Penderecki String Quartet, Continuum Music, and Motion Music (Canada) including a Millennium Project Grant, as well as several interdisciplinary grants from the University of Southern California Arts Initiative and the American Composers Forum. She has music composition degrees from the University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and a doctorate from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Since 1998, Krausas has been producing multi-media presentations in Los Angeles that incorporate her works with dance, acrobatics, and video. Earlier this year she organized a concert and CD release for The Player Piano Project, a collection of works for player piano by 22 composers from 6 countries. IN + ON, a collection of her photographs, is available at lulu.com. She is currently on faculty at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Show less
Tom Pettit is a playwright and television writer from London, England living in Los Angeles. He moved to the United States and graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Spanish Literature. He has written numerous plays and screenplays and most recently wrote for the CBS television crime drama Cold Case; one of his episodes was the award-nominated Forever Blue. This year he wrote the television pilot Charlie Delta, concerning a woman who solves crimes in San Diego County. He is currently completing his first mystery novel, A Madman’s Notes.
Based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, The Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth is a chamber opera that follows Lady Macbeth’s metamorphosis from greed for power through conflicting feelings over the murder of Duncan to further her husband’s political position, and ends with her final descent into madness and suicide. She is accompanied by three witches—representing fate—who provide a neutral commentary to her monologues. Show more
When Tom and I started to work on the opera based on Macbeth, one of our primary influences was Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant film adaptation of the play. We loved the dark, oppressive, dream-like world that he managed to create. We were also very intrigued by the idea of fate controlling the entire story in the shape of the three witches, who are always present, weaving together the action like puppet masters. Show less
The action begins with the three witches invoking a spell that will set in motion the series of inevitable and bloody events. Lady Macbeth recounts her husband’s encounter with these same witches, who predicted his ultimate ascent to king. She invokes spirits to “unsex” her, enabling her to murder King Duncan and facilitate her husband’s ascent. Her initial resolve falls away: she witnesses Macbeth kill the king and is horrified by the deed. The witches enter again with their magical incantations—“Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”—while Lady Macbeth descends into madness, attempting to wash the blood from her hands. The work concludes with the witches leading her “to the rooky wood” and handing her a knife, with which she slits her throat.
