Paper and Project Woes

I originally wanted to focus on one scene from Carlo Menotti’s The Medium. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to write and present on the scene where Baba begins to lose her grip on reality causing her daughter, Monica, to calm her by singing; (in this scene we hear the aria “The Black Swan.”) Or write about the very last scene of the opera in which Baba kills Toby, her daughter’s mute friend and assistant during the séances.

Now I have watched two versions of the opera, one directed by Carlo Menotti himself, which was produced as a TV movie, and another from the 1970’s produced for the stage. I feel like this fits in perfectly with our Friday discussions on how we would stage an opera and who would we cast. I have one version directed by the composer in movie form, so his intentions and wants are clearly preserved for us to see, and another version directed by someone else for the stage, which is much more in line with the staging directions and libretto printed in the orchestral score.

Now that I’ve watched two versions, and I have more clips off of YouTube to watch, I’m not sure how exactly I want to focus my paper. Part of me wants to go into a more general overview of the differences between all of the versions I’ve seen, but the other part of me thinks it will be more effective to focus on only one scene and use that to demonstrate my point. I’m just not sure how I will translate that into my project as of right now. I originally wanted to show different clips of the same scene, and discuss the differences and similarities between them, but I think that would make for too long of a presentation. If I write a more general paper I could use one scene to support my findings, or with a great deal of help from someone good with editing and technology, I could put together a reel of different versions of various scenes back to back.

I have a book that I just found in the library that discusses Menotti and his productions “on screen,” and I’m hoping that that will help guide me in a good direction for my paper. I have a lot of information; I’m just having a difficult time organizing it all into a contained paper and project.