The Memory Stone (Week 1: March 29)

Staging progresses slowly by surely day by day... Today we managed to get through the entire piece, and I was finally able to witness many of the creative choices that Matthew has made. Up to this week, he has been keeping the staging a secret, slowly revealing details one by one, likey Genji slowly opening up a shoji sliding door panel and peeping in his lover in the night. Today we also began working with the costumes. Not only do our singers have to negotiate singing memorized text in a foreign language and remembering where they have to be and what they have to be doing at every moment, but they also have to change their costumes on stage and in site of the audience.

A sculpture "shell" made of alabaster used to represent the memory stone in the opera

(l to r) Nina Yoshida Nelsen and Mihoko Kinoshita getting used to their costumes