David Sidwell, composer of the music for "Tales of Nikolai Gogol" asked me to provide two pieces for inclusion in the musical: "Ti Sento Qui" for the characters Princess Volkonskaya and Nikolai Gogol and "The Secret" sung by Piskarev's love interest "SHE".
Both songs were developed from 'pop-opera' works in progress - "Ti Sento Qui" was modified to fit Gogol's back-story and outline the loss of his lover. Italian lyric by Lilia Carpinelli.
"The Secret", further developed script ideas by librettist John Mandelberg to incorporate my original melody surrounded by new material in a busy, rhythmic tempo that outlined a supposed back-story for "SHE" which is presented as a fairy tale.
NB. the vocal lines are without lyrics in the mp3 audio files attached as they are computer generated from Finale Notation software. The URLs link to youtube versions of original performance.