Posts Tagged ‘sad’
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
Tags: angel, Book, chase, damnation, demon, evil, modern opera, nightmare, prophetic, sad, salvation, terror
This scene takes us back to the interior of our protagonist’s home, once again, but this time in the middle of the night. She is slowly pacing, with her head lowered, clearly feeling buried in heavy thoughts. She laments aloud her predicament, which involves a specific decision which she is now faced with. Somehow, she must reconcile the two main events that have occurred with her so far in our story: the recent death of her brother, and the invitation she offered to take her friends to church for the unique event. Her being personally so grief-stricken, the church event seems trivial in appearance.
But, as so many “regular” events in our lives prove themselves to be, the significance is actually quite profound. The reason is that she plans for her friends to attend an especially moving concert with her, after which the Gospel message of Christ will be shared with the audience. This new significance is revealed to us in a soliloquy, as she thinks out her problem: She is deeply depressed due to the loss of her brother, but she is also highly convinced that this particular one-time church event will likely be an eternity-deciding point in her friends’ lives. Thus, to her mind, her love for them is placed directly at odds with her very personal and profound need to grieve her recent loss.
Tags: anxiety, Christian, depression, difficulty, dilemma, eternity, grief, impasse, modern opera, night, pacing, sad, salvation, soliloquy, worry
In the same scene, the young woman unexpectedly receives a knock at her door. She opens the door to reveal a sorrowful solider. He informs her that her brother has been killed in battle. (He was among the soldiers we saw in the first scene.) The lights go off as the music continues, and a new scene presents itself in dim light. It is the graveyard, several days after her brother’s funeral. It is nighttime, and there is the sound of drizzling rain accompanied by occasional soft thunder.
She visits her brother’s grave, and while there, inquires of the Lord whether her brother, a lifelong atheist, has gone to Heaven. She feels the answer soon within her soul, and it is a very sad one. She weeps bitterly as the scene ends.
Tags: funeral dirge, graveyard, modern opera, mourn, night, prayer, rain, sad, salvation, weep
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.
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.
Tags: battlefield, damnation, death, demon, disturbing, evil, fate, God, Hell, inspiring, land mine, military march, modern opera, sad, Satan, soliders, soul, spirit, terror, tragedy, unsettling, war