This is a very joyous piece. A celebratory yet light-and-quick polyphonic coronation trumpets the entrance of the former prostitute into Heaven, at the gates of which she is greeted by the angel with the Book.

As she approaches the angel, the spotlight that shone down from directly over her in “Life For Ever After” follows her, symbolizing and celebrating her sanctification.

As he did twice before, the angel looks scrupulously inside the Book. He then smiles broadly at her, and brings both of the Book’s covers together at once, so that it closes vertically.

All the stage lights turn off the instant the Book is closed, and the opera is over.

Download “Finale” score

Sitting straight up in her bed in the dim moonlight, the young woman seems truly overwhelmed by the new combination of her current grief over her brother and the ghastly nature of the images in her recent dreams. She slowly looks downward in sadness, then eventually upward as if to God. Without a word, she somehow finds a small amount of peace — enough to try and go back to sleep and just hope for the best.

After she resumes her sleep, however, the terror returns, but along with a new and much more pointed set of prophetic visions. Suddenly, in the middle of all the action of the people and demons in her dream, everything freezes in time, outside of which we now see the original angel — the one from the very first scene in the opera, the one with the Book. He is again somberly reading the Book. The elements in the scene the young woman dreams are still a bit surreal and proverbial in nature, but one thing she now knows for certain: Her friends are in great danger!

Download “Continuing Nightmares” score