“A Vision”

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.

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Tags: curse, dance, demon, doom, fate, frenzy, menace, modern opera, nightmare, phophetic, revenge, sad, terror


“Continuing Nightmares”

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!

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Tags: angel, Book, chase, damnation, demon, evil, modern opera, nightmare, prophetic, sad, salvation, terror


 “The Fall”

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.

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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