In this necrowaltz, Demons frenetically praise their leader in both song and dance, to a theme consisting of sped-up and grotesque embellishments of the plainsong motif we heard in “The Friendship Waltz”. During the eventual peak of their manic glee over the prospect of more human eternal damnation, the voice of God is suddenly and shockingly heard in one word: “Enough!!” The now shrieking and wailing wraiths scatter in terror.

God’s following few and loud words to them speak of the young woman in the same way that He famously spoke to Satan of “My servant Job” in the Bible. We then see the young woman, and hear her plaintively giving up on ever again attempting to help bring her friends to Christ. Judging from what she has just heard from them, she now feels that such an attempt is futile.

But suddenly, we hear angels voicing robust encouragement, exhorting her to “Go!!” We hear this audibly, but she hears with her heart. She resolves to go to her friends, and to try one last time: She will share the Good News with them herself — and on their turf this time.

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Its title parodying that of “The Friendship Waltz”, as well as more subtly suggesting the words “false” and “faults”, this minor-key embellishment of the former work once again features the group of four friends, who, short of blissfully singing simplistic songs about the supposed meaning of life, as they did before, now instead begin to shallowly gossip against their “friend”, the young woman whom they recently abandoned — and who now covertly is overhearing them, having just now arrived to try and talk with them again.

Though hurtful and sad to the young woman, her friends’ current behavior is simply delightful to one character in particular, and proves to be precisely what that “Master Deceiver” has been attempting to arrange, as we discover in the following piece, which bears Satan’s title.

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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

The opera begins with a lone angel, sitting high up and in the distance. He is solemnly and slowly poring over a large Book, first at the left-hand page, then at the right. The angel slowly shakes his head in sadness, bows it, and closes the Book.

The next scene is a battlefield during wartime. Both the geographical area and the soldiers’ uniforms are generic, but a time period slightly in the future is suggested by the presence of armed female combatants marching with males and in equal numbers. The soldiers are singing a military march which boasts of their power. Very soon, though, all are killed by a powerful land mine blast.

In the next scene, they are spirits. A large shadow of a pointing hand appears on the curtain: God tells the spirits to “Depart”. Next, there is silence and almost total darkness. The spirits are wondering where they are and what has happened. Satan appears, and explains that they now belong to him. He has a lot of cruel fun with the full explanation, holding back information and dragging out the process for as long as amuses him. The spirits simply cannot accept their new reality at first. But toward the end of this scene, they realize their doom in full. With profound sorrow and regret, they finally accept their most grim of all fates, and their wills melt into eternal defeat. A circle made up of demons rapidly closes in upon the spirits as this ultra-tragic piece ends.

Download the Overture score

Download “The Fall” score