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Mark
Morris is one of the few writers anywhere who has made the art of the
libretto central to his work. His nine operas to date have been seen in nine
countries, and translated into Swedish and Spanish. With composer Julian
Grant, he won the 1988 National Opera Association of North American Chamber
Opera Competition for The Skin Drum, subsequently seen at the ENO Workshop,
while Kafka's Chimp, with composer John Metcalf, premiered with great
success at the 1996 Banff Festival of the Arts, was broadcast on CBC, and
subsequently toured Sweden. He has in addition written the words for many
cantatas, choral works, and song cycles, heard in the Canada, the U.S.A.,
and the UK.
He has also directed and designed extensively for both opera and theatre,
from Verdi and Puccini to Shakespeare and Auden & Isherwood. He was for some
years the Director of the Opera Workshop at the University of Calgary, and
has given seminars on the art of writing words for composers at The Banff
Centre. He was a staff correspondent for Classical Music Magazine in London
from 1976-1987, and has written for publications on four continents,
including Opera Canada and Opera (UK). His second book is now published to
considerably critical acclaim as the Pimlico Dictionary of 20th-Century
Composers, covering compositions rather than biography, and for which he
listened to over 3,000 works. He regularly broadcasts for C.B.C., notably
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. In 1996 he received the first-ever PhD. in
English, Creative Writing, in Canada, for which his thesis was an original
libretto.
In 1966/7 he co-founded KidsOp, and has remained its
Artistic Director and webmaster. He currently teaches as a 'full-time'
sessional lecturer at the University of Alberta in Edmonton,
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