In this scene, our protagonist dies. The young woman is first seen on her hospital bed, barely clinging to life. Alone in her room, she soon stretches her hand up toward Heaven, and gives a weak-voiced, one-word prayer — all that she can manage — a plea for her boyfriend’s parents.
Simultaneously, but off to the side of the stage and in an otherworldly environment, her boyfriend’s parents are standing still and wearing blindfolds, demons surrounding them. Yet the parents don’t seem afraid. If anything, they look quite relaxed and contented, standing rather casually instead of rigidly, clearly not noticing.
On the opposite side of the stage, by himself, the boyfriend is on his knees, praying. As soon as he begins to pray, the demons cease their threatening advance toward his parents, look upward apprehensively, and then glare toward where the young woman is.
Both side-scenes are then darkened, and we once again can see only the young woman in her room. She now begins to have difficulty breathing. She turns her head toward the audience. Then, she is gone.
Tags: believe, boyfriend, death, demon, disease, dying wish, evil, faith, girlfriend, happy, illness, Jesus Christ, modern opera, otherworldly, prayer, repentance, sad, salvation
This scene takes place in a small hospital waiting room. What we witness is the grief and dread on the faces of the young woman and her companion, as they, in silent sorrow, contemplate her fate.
Tags: anguish, anxiety, boyfriend, fear, girlfriend, gloom, grief, hospital, modern opera, pain, sad, waiting room
The boyfriend returns, running back to the young woman’s doorway panic-stricken and breathless. He urgently asks her what’s wrong.
She is beside herself, wide-eyed, very afraid, in tears, and her voice is faltering as she attempts to explain to him that she awoke from her nightmare to find bizarre and terrifying marks on her face and body. After seeing the malevolent marks, he is aghast, and momentarily speechless.
After a long pause, he frantically asks her what they are. She screams back that she doesn’t know, so he insists they go to a hospital immediately.
Tags: beside herself, bizarre, blotches, boyfriend, curse, deadly disease, deadly marks, doom, emergency, fear, girlfriend, hospital, illness, malevolent, modern opera, sad, sickness, terror
As in the first opera, our protagonist is again plagued by fearful dreams. Her nightmare, acted out for our benefit, depicts her standing still on a surreal and desolate plain, and looking increasingly frightened under an eerie, moonless and starless night sky.
Nine demons with lanterns dance unpredictably toward, past and around her, menacingly and threateningly. We see her become increasingly shaken at all of this harrassment, as that feeling of helpless utter terror so common to nightmares fully grips her mind.
Tags: curse, dance, demon, doom, fate, frenzy, menace, modern opera, nightmare, phophetic, revenge, sad, terror
Sharing the title of its opera, this central-thematic piece finds Satan and his demons in a peak of rage, plotting revenge against our protagonist for her indirect and inadvertent sharing of the Gospel with the eavesdropping prostitute in the first opera, “Project Eternity”.
The hearer had repented right then and there, and she sought God earnestly from that day forward.
She eventually died and entered Heaven. And for that, Satan and a great horde of screaming and raging demons now vow to bring down upon our protagonist a terrible act of Vengeance.
Tags: demon, evil, modern opera, rage, revenge, sad, salvation, Satan, vexed
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.
Download “Master Deceiver” score
Tags: damnation, dance of death, demon, doom, encouragement, eternity, evil, friends, Hell, impending doom, modern opera, revel, sad, Satan, shofar, totentanz
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.
Download “Friendship Faltz” score
Tags: Christians, complain, damnation, demons, doom, eternity, evil, friends, gossip, impending doom, modern opera, sad, Satan
Our protagonist has yet another prophetic dream, this time a “forthtelling” (revealing present but hidden truths) rather than a “foretelling” (revealing future events) dream, as she did last time (to use two theological terms). In this third dream sequence, God symbolically reminds her of the nature of the true path of all Christians: that they must follow in Christ’s own troubled and weary footsteps on His way to Calvary, and that all must “take up the cross and follow” Him. The dream conjures up a physical manifestation of that admonition by Jesus to His hearers in Matthew 16:24.
Tags: attack, Christ's cross, count the cost, demon, dream, evil, Jesus Christ, Matthew 16:24, modern opera, prophetic, sacrifice, sad, take up your cross, visions
A new scene opens, in which Satan boasts aloud of his unparalleled skill in deception. He smugly muses over just how very simple it is for him to lead mankind to their ultimate destruction. After he’s finished gloating in soliloquy, the young Christian woman enters the scene with her four friends, her clearly having decided in favor of her love for her friends, over and against her own personal and immediate emotional need to grieve over the recent death of her brother.
Satan then stands nearby, unseen by all except us, as a strange man approaches the group. Satan exerts a strong spiritual influence over the man, feeding him a powerful urge to bully the young group and to block their path. Satan also puts into the man brilliantly deceptive things to say, in order to dissuade the group, or at least some of its members, from proceeding and attending the church event.
The young woman humbly relies upon the wisdom of God within her to successfully answer the man’s subtle arguments and strong accusations. But her four friends eventually believe the boor, heed his clever lies and discouragements, and forsake her one by one.
Tags: argue, bully, Christian concert, chruch, clever, debate, deception, demonic possession, evil, friends, Gospel, modern opera, sacrifice, sad, salvation, Satan, subtlety, young woman
As a Prelude to an Act, this piece naturally has no visual element. Total darkness is preferred in these cases, in order to better allow us to comtemplate the music and its plot significance.
Download “Prelude to Act Three” score
Tags: Act Three, dark, evil, friska, lassan, modern opera, prelude, sad, soulful, trombone, viola, violins