Long-range planning

The novella will engage me until the end of the year, possibly into 2012. When it is done, my next project should be my libretto Varmints, writing the vocal score, while I still have faculties to do it. It's be sitting unattended every since the deal fell through with the composer for whom I adapted my stage play of the same name. But I love this libretto! I must do something with it. I need to begin the opera and get it out there for some energetic young composer to find and finish.

The opening:

(MUSIC: tragic, epic. Darkness. Perhaps reddish lights, the aftermath of fire, a blaze. Into which the shadowy figures of the four ghosts appear.)

                  

QUARTET OF THE DEAD

We are the dead

Our rotting flesh

The buzzards’ treat

Killed because

We dug for gold

And found instead

Ancestral bones

Our souls wander

Restlessly

Because our stories

Are untold

Listen then

To our grave tale

And give our souls

Their weary rest

We begin

In Oregon

In a desert

Filled with gold

Into which

Comes other news

Of a crime

Daring and bold

We are the dead

This is our tale

Entire libretto