AN OPERA IN PROGRESS

For our culture, Virgil represents a figure who, attained mythical stature. We know nothing about his life and also, generations have projected on to his name their own ideal of artistic creation. Whether we praise the formal perfection of his work, the power of his metaphors, his evocation of nature, his mystical tenor or his role as an official poet, we face an intimidating genius who rests now under the laurels of Mount Pausilippe. But, Virgil left behind a major work, the Aeneid, which was interrupted by death. Tradition tells us that Virgil found the work imperfect, untrue, and wanted to destroy it, and that the Emperor Augustus dissuaded him.

This historical scene inspired Hermann Broch in his novel, Der Tod des Vergil, in which the long interior monologue of the poet describes his last moments and his hesitation to destroy the manuscript, questioning himself about the ultimate goal of art and its relationship with power. In his questioning did Virgil forsee the coming of Christianity? Did he judge his art as barron? Did he find himself compromised with the Powerful? Our time, like his, through the change of the millennium, awakens the need for spiritual self-examination and metaphysical interrogation.

Our opera takes place in our time or near future. The talent of a famous writer, Virgil, is exploited by the powerful Agosto, the very one who dispossessed him from his pure love, Vera. Heart broken, Virgil disappears. Agosto, unable to maintain his power without the support of the art of Virgil, sends Vera for him. She finds him sick, living among tramps under a bridge where a very different game is played. She convinces him to return. Discovering that Vera's motive is interest in power and not love, Virgil initially refuses to collaborate and demands that his manuscripts are destroyed. Finally, giving up his grip on life and by love for Vera, he renounces faithfulness to himself and accepts to participate for a last time to the absurd farce of power. This first step of progressive moral abandonment leads him to dissolve in the great light of Death.

Beyond the great themes of love-sacrifice and of detachment, a form of initiation to death, our plot tries to show as well the mystery of creative intuition which aims at the immobility of the Eternal (absolute beauty, love, fidelity...) but always falls back down in its own moving reflection which is the way of the world (misery, betrayal, strategies of power…). The imagination mimics agony as a means to approach a dangerous revelation, indefinitely postponed. This is how aesthetics builds upon itself by pursuing an illumination, impossible to grasp. Thus, the tie binding Virgil and Vera, might represent the link which exists between creator and creation.

The opera includes two acts. The first has 7 scenes, the second has 5 scenes. The Lyric Suite retains 5 scenes framed by a prelude, three interludes, and a postlude, all orchestral.

The Prelude depicts the turmoils of the poet, his doubts about the value of his work and his anguish as he faces the imminence of his death. We can hear the brief evocation of a betrayed passion, the portrayal of an Empire at the peak of its power, the rhythm of galleys bringing back the dying Virgil toward his native soil. They take us on a formidable time transfer, which deposits us at the door of the first scene of the opera.
1) Dispute. One evening, under a bridge over an estuary, in the heart of a modern town, a group of tramps is waken by a dispute between two of them. They leave for their night's adventures.
2) Watch and somniloquy. Only Leo and Jane stay, spying on one another. They suspect the other of plotting something. Suddenly, a voice is heard: a man lying at the foot of the first pile of the bridge, wrapped in rags, agitated, speaks in his sleep. This stranger tells of a hidden treasure. An ambiguous and strange dialogue starts between the dreamer and the two eavesdroppers.
3) Lamentation. A beam of light sweeps across the upper reaches of the bridge, searching in the night. Vera appears, wandering on the bridge. While she sings, we see Virgil in a fitful sleep, as though he was reacting to Vera's words, or the singing of Vera belonged to his dreams.
4) Sleep. Virgil joins the dreamy voices of the strings. He evokes the betraying of his own roots and of himself. In the background, one hears an emerging voice from the sleeping tramps. Reminding him of his father, this voice, an interpreter from the world of the dead, engages in a duet with him.
5) Death of Virgil. Virgil fights with death in a grand, obsessional monologue built in five parts, each of which correspond to the distinct stages toward death: denial, rebellion, negotiation, resignation and finally acceptance. This last stage is a great passacaglia reflecting a spiral that leads to the ultimate moment, without ever reaching it. It leads to the revelation, the passage toward the Unknown, which haunts the whole work with the following premonition: at the same time "…not yet…" and "…yet already…" The voice stopped, the body extinguished, the music of the postlude takes with it the last breath of the soul.

Commenting on these last moments, the composer confides: "This ends like a star that I have not succeeded to extinquish but that I have pushed so far that I don't see it anymore, '…not yet, yet already…' A star that I know shines there, but the light of which does not reach me anymore. It is a fine dissonance that remains suspended and of which Time gives the rhythm to its progressive extinction. It vibrates, but I do not sense it anymore; I only know it is there and that it will resolve in the consonant radiance of oblivion.".