"Winter Music"

I recently relaunched my 1990s opera novel, "The Singing House" in an interactive Kindle 

edition.  A reader can now click on links in the ebook and be taken to performances of the great Wagner and Verdi operas that drive the narrative. And the book has recently been adapted as a screenplay, "Winter Music." The story opens as Rose rushes through a rare London snow to purchase a wedding dress. It is the night before her wedding and she forgot this little detail....As she passes in front of the Royal Opera House, an eccentric stranger steps out and offers her a ticket to "Tristan und Isolde". She accepts and her life changes forever. Here is my amateur video of what that moment might have looked like to Rose. With thanks to the Columbia University Orchestra for the soundtrack.

Wagner or Verdi?

 ‘But last winter when I heard so much music that my life was changed for ever, someone said to me that Wagner can take us to such ecstasy that ordinary life is almost unbearable afterwards, whereas Verdi, like Shakespeare, reconciles us to the earth, to our miserable human condition, makes us noble in our despair.’
‘That’s quite a speech, Rose,’ laughed Leo...

From the closing chapter of "The Singing House"