How to engrave an Opera (in Sibelius) – Ep. 12

Episode 12 – Building the front matter (Part 3)

We are almost there! Today, we will conclude the building of the front matter, covering the Commission page, the Instrumentation page, and the Prefatory Note page. Let’s dive straight in!

Commission page

This page may or may not be necessary but, for the sake of completion, here it is. Let’s start by using our reliable “Subtitle (on blank page)” style to write the following:

\$title=[Title]\ was commissioned by
<commissioner>
and was first shown <TV/radio-emittent> on <date>

Now, create a new style which is quite a bit smaller than this, around 24 pt should be fine, and set the vertical position to 60 mm from the top of the page. Call it “Commission (on blank page)”.

Below this text object, if the opera was already premiered at the time of publication (which it should), you should list the roles in ALL CAPS and the singers/actors who performed in it. Do that in two columns, either using tabs or by creating two different text styles with independent indents. For my template, I chose the first option and called the style “Roles (on blank page)”. Finally, below, write centred on the page details about the choir, the orchestra, the conductor, and associate conductor, the stage director(s), who took care of costumes, the scene designer, and the executive producer. I used yet another text style called “Credits (on blank page)”, 22 pt in size and placed 200 mm from the top. If the actors’ list is longer, increase this last value.

On the page next to this, simply copy and paste what you have just created and change the commission text to this:

The first stage performance of \$title\ was given
at <place, city>, on <date> 

Change actor and credits names as you see fit for your specific case.

Instrumentation page

Finally, the funniest one. Sibelius has a wildcard to show this in the form of \$instrumentchanges\, so let’s try it out here. I would rather not spoil you the surprise with a picture of my page. All I can say is that you shouldn’t use this or, if you insist, you should write your version inside the File > Info area. Alternatively, for a better visual experience, write it manually on the page and then copy-paste it into that field. It will take a while, but you should eventually get to this result.

Just, please, be mindful that any future changes of instrumentation to your file will not be reflected in this field, hence the reason for doing things manually. Another reason is that, if you have plenty of hidden staves, they will all be automatically included in the list, which we don’t want. And there is more: we want “Flute 1.2” written in the score, but we want “2 Flutes (2nd doubling piccolo)” in the list. I hope I convinced you!

For this, I used a copy of the “Subtitle (on blank page)” style, scaled its size down to 22 pt, and set the horizontal text alignment in the Horizontal Posn tab to be left aligned. In the practical realisation of the text item, I used the Inspector (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-I) to place the numerals “st” and “nd” into apex size and position. To manually resize the percussionist’s instruments list entries, select the text and edit the “Size” field in the Text page of the ribbon.

At the end of this process, do this:

1. Select the text and hit Return to engage input mode
2. Go to the top of the list and, before “ORCHESTRA”, type exactly this: \$instrumentchanges=
3. Go to the bottom of the list (for example by pressing Cmd/Ctrl-down arrow) and type \.

This will automatically override the “Instrument changes” field in the File > Info page.

Prefatory Note page

Last but not least, we want to reserve the last two pages for anything you, the editor, the dedicatee, the commissioner, or whoever, would like to say about the opera. I have used the automatically generated text feature of Adobe InDesign to fill the body text boxes. I suggest using the “Heading 1 (on blank page)” text style for the titles and to not using the “Plain text (on blank page)” style for the text box. Create a new dedicated text style, in my case something centred on the page, with right-aligned text (as Britten did).

Manually resize the body text box to fit your need, as it will not do it on its own and, upon pasting the text into the cursor, it will likely show you something spanning entire pages.

With the text box selected, first reset its design and position, using the commands found in the Appearance tab or through shortcuts Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-P and Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-D. Then, in the Inspector, tap on the Fixed button under the “Text frame” label. Notice how it should say something like “1000”, possibly a hard-cap set by the developers when they created this feature. Instead of that huge number, write something small like “100”, then manually resize the frame with the pointer.

Last touch

As a last finishing touch, we need to have page numbers make sense. The easiest thing to do is to hide all page numbers until page 2 of the score, marking the first score page as number 1 and using Roman numerals to keep track of the front matter. To achieve that, in Sibelius, go to page 1 of the document and see how, in the top-right corner, there is a faint 1. This means that the page number is there but will not show. If you don’t see it, make sure that the “Hidden Objects” checkbox in View > Invisibles is checked:

Now, go to Text > Numbering > Page Number Change and make sure that your dialogue looks like this, with the Hide Page Numbers selected.

Hit OK and the cursor will turn blue, meaning it is loaded. Tap anywhere on the page, and you will see that all page numbers have now disappeared (they actually became invisible, as they need to be there since those pages technically still have a number).

Next, go all the way right to the first page of the score and select the first bar of any stave. Repeat the steps above, but change the radio button selection to Hide first page number. Doing that will ensure that, from music page 2 onward, numbers will appear properly.

If you want fancier options, such as Roman numerals for the front matter, just add an extra step in between from page 6 or so but, frankly, most of the scores I have seen and prepared do not show page numbers for the front matter. If the editorial notes are particularly long, then yes, add numbers to those pages, but nothing more.

One more thing

I have now updated my template to include all these changes. There is now also a new version of it, called Premium, that includes dedicated templates for Apple Pages and Adobe InDesign. If there are enough request, I will also do one for Microsoft Word.

Bottom Line

That’s it for today! In the next—and possibly final—episode, we will create the vocal score. Stay tuned!

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Thank you for your time and continuous support.

See you in the next episode!

Michele