Composer Richard Oberacker has spent most of the month in Cincinnati, playing piano at Dracula rehearsals, leading a master class, huddling with the new musical's creative team.

        Originating a musical is a first for the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. Director Aubrey Berg, musical director Roger Grodsky and costume designer Dean Mogle agree that having one of the authors at CCM has been invaluable.

        The process, they agree, has been an exciting series of “what ifs” and “why nots” that started months ago with flurrying e-mail correspondence.

        One of the first e-mails was about Mr. Mogle's suggestion that the time period be shifted a few years to accommodate fashion.

        “Bustles and corsets are tight, restricted. Sexual repression is an important aspect to the piece. When the women join Dracula, their clothing becomes loose and free, they're looser in their thoughts,” Mr. Mogle explained one evening before rehearsals, showing off a book of eye-catching costume sketches.

        Instead of virginal white changing to blood red as the action progresses, Mr. Mogle flips the concept. Rich reds are in evidence early on, giving way to bloodless white later.

        Want surprises

        Mr. Mogle raised ethnicity issues. More e-mails flew.

        “There was great ethnic conflict in Europe at the time,” Mr. Mogle says. “Dracula isn't western, white European.”

        “That wasn't in my head at all,” Mr. Oberacker says happily. “No one forewarned me, and when I saw the first rendering, it was surprising — Slavic, almost gypsy.

        “As an artist, I want surprising. You want to dispel the audience's expectations.”

        Mr. Oberacker had input in casting, and characters started evolving as they were tailored to the performers playing them.

        When Annie Leri was cast as Lucy, friend to heroine Mina and an early Dracula victim, the character suddenly seemed plausible as “delicate, young, a wide-eyed innocent, and completely out-to-lunch sometimes,” Mr. Oberacker says, laughing. “Not at all what I wrote originally,” but it's another surprise he likes.

        Small changes, big impact

        Musically, there have been small changes — but, Mr. Oberacker emphasizes, “Every little thing is a big thing, and one word, one measure has an enormous impact.”

        Then there was the new ending.

        In the first working draft, “it felt incomplete to me,” Mr. Berg says. “It lacked an element I wanted. And Richard said, "no.'

        “We went back and forth for a month,” Mr. Oberacker agrees.

        “The story has a myth of blood, it's why it's been popular for 100 years,” Mr. Berg says firmly. “Immortal. Forbidden. Erotic.”

        “I said I do not want that word (blood) sung in the show,” Mr. Oberacker says, laughing. “I'm not doing it, I'm not writing it.”

        Mr. Berg held his ground. “I wanted a coda. I wanted to examine why the story has been so potent for a century.” He went on the Internet and started looking for quotations using “blood.”

        He found 666 and sent 100 to Mr. Oberacker.

        A new finale is what the team agrees is “a sort of funeral Mass for Dracula.”

        Now all he has to do, Mr. Oberacker says laconically, is persuade his writing partner, Michael Lazar.

        Out-of-town producers are expected during the Dracula run, thanks to industry buzz about the long-term prospects for the Lazar-Oberacker teaming.

        “What we've come up with here isn't the be all and end all” Mr. Berg says. “It will change and evolve in new productions. Which is exactly as it should be.”

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