Musing on the Muse

Miguel del Aguila’s new chamber opera, which the Ojai Camerata premiered last weekend in Ventura and which has another performance this Saturday in Ojai, is called “Composer Missing.” But around the county, and in this column, del Aguila has been very much present of late.

Anyone with even passing awareness of the music scene here knows of del Aguila, the Uruguayan in Oxnard, whose music has been a prominent feature of Ventura’s music scene in the last few years. Recently, he was a toast of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, where the Cuarteto Latinoamericano premiered his piano quintet, “Clocks.” It’s a subtle, funny concoction, a musical reflection on the nature of time and timepieces.

But “Composer Missing” is another milestone: his first opera performance, not to be confused with his first opera, “Cuauhtemoc,” a grand affair about the Aztecan emperor, written five years ago. It remains, as yet, unseen and unheard, except for excerpts yanked out of operatic context. Del Aguila wanted to write a lighter opera for the Ojai Camerata, which he has directed, this year. He got a grant from the city of Ventura’s Cultural Affairs and was off and writing.

A few weeks ago, as he was still following the winding path to finishing the opera--both the libretto and music--del Aguila spoke of the odd process of creating his newest work, in the comfort of his beachfront home.

“As I put this thing together, I’ve discovered many things about myself and the world I live in and the process of writing music, because that’s what the opera is about. It’s about a composer writing an opera. It’s a bit of creative incest.”

Deadlines being a mother of invention, del Aguila’s project had its conceptual flowering when the composer was pressed, last fall, to figure out what this opera was about.

“The Ojai Camerata came to me and said ‘Miguel, we have to put something in our brochure about your opera, a synopsis.’ And I had no idea what it was going to be about. So I sat at my computer from midnight until 3 in the morning and came up with a synopsis. Then I needed a title, so I gave it one. Once it was printed on paper, then I had to stick to it.”

Not that it was as casual as it might seem.

“I do think that with everything we do,” he offered, “there is a process going on before we start doing it, at least for me, writing music. Whenever I decide to write an opera, it’s not that I decided at that point. That’s just when I became conscious of my need to write it. But before then, I think there were years of subconscious ideas, cooking in there.

“The strangest thing to me is that it’s an experiment. When I write music, I use lots of elements from plays, from the theater. The timing and the development of things, which in the theater are characters, is very similar to music. But I’ve never done the opposite. I’ve never done a libretto or a play using the elements of music. Of course, there are huge differences, because music is a very abstract and vague language, and you don’t have to make things make sense.”

The characters in del Aguila’s opera are less flesh-and-blood than spirits in the creative world--the composer in uneasy liaisons with his alternately cajoling and sadistic muses.

As he said, “Inspiration is very temperamental and unruly and it just does whatever it wants. And then, the other character is called Tragic Muse. She’s the dark, somber part of art, that art comes through. Negative and depressing, that also makes you create, but of course, it’s bad for you.

“When you are writing music, you’re always dealing with both elements. ‘Do I make this go this way, or this way? All of that happens in the opera itself, the writing of the opera; the composer is missing at the end of the first act. People think he drowned.”

He paused, then laughed. “I won’t tell the end.”

* Miguel del Aguila’s chamber opera, “Composer Missing,” by the Ojai Camerata, 8 p.m. Saturday at Ojai Presbyterian Church. $12, $9 for students and seniors; (805) 289-4890.