The Colorado Chamber Orchestra and Opera
Three Pop-up Operas
Noriko Tsuchiya and Jeffrey Alan Lockwood, co-directors
Armando Contreras, stage director
Thomas A. Blomster, music director
libretti by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
Music by Noriko Tsuchiya and Thomas A. Blomster
LIBRETTI
MIRACLES:
A cricket, a seagull and a Mormon walk into a bar…
An Opera in One Act and Eight Scenes
Elizabeth Brooks, Gull
Joshua Zabatta, Mormon
Armando Contreras, Cricket
SCENE 1
GULL
Can we join you?
MORMON
My first beer. And a drunken nightmare is my punishment.
CRICKET
Punishment for what?
MORMON
For sacrilege—for doubt.
CRICKET
Of what?
MORMON
A miracle.
GULL
Which one?
MORMON
The Miracle of the Gulls.
CRICKET
Commemorated with a monument on Temple Square.
GULL
A flock of golden seagulls!
CRICKET
Two bronze birds.
GULL
Whatever.
MORMON
Stop!
What matters is the miracle is… a lie.
GULL
What have you been told?
SCENE 2
MORMON
After we arrived and planted crops, crickets came in multitudes. We battled valiantly,
prayed fervently. But we were overrun.
GULL
Then we arrived! An avian cavalry from California, to the Salt Lake valley!
MORMON
Seagulls saved the pioneers from starvation.
CRICKET
And we became known as Mormon crickets.
MORMON
True… But the gulls’ miraculous victory—is fictitious.
GULL
Says who?
MORMON
Historians. The facts. The truth!
CRICKET
Then tell us your real story…
SCENE 3
MORMON
We came to escape oppression.
CRICKET
To find sanctuary.
MORMON
Pioneers from the East, then. Refugees from the South, now.
GULL
We came to escape hunger.
CRICKET
To find refuge.
GULL
Feasting on crickets, then. Flocking to landfills, now.
CRICKET
Migrating from the mountainsides, we found a bounty.
MORMON
You took our food! The valley wasn’t yours.
CRICKET
Sure it was. But we can share our hallowed place.
SCENE 4
MORMON
Insects cannot have a holy land.
GULL
Why not? A place becomes sacred through loss.
CRICKET
Through sacrifice.
MORMON
Gettysburg, Omaha Beach… Calvary.
CRICKET
Your people struggled for decades. My kind struggled for millennia.
GULL
Deserts are not easy places for seabirds.
CRICKET
Or thirsty insects.
MORMON
Or hungry farmers. There was heartache, but there was no miracle!
SCENE 5
CRICKET
We thought finding succulent crops was miraculous.
GULL
We thought finding tasty crickets was miraculous.
CRICKET
Honestly, crickets find one another to be delectable.
GULL
As did the Native Americans.
CRICKET
That us—Utah’s manna from heaven.
MORMON
No!
GULL & CRICKET
No?
MORMON
No. A miracle means the gulls were sent by God to save my people.
GULL
How do you know it did not happen that way?
SCENE 6
MORMON
Historians say frost and drought had damaged crops.
CRICKET
Even so, we ravaged what remained.
MORMON
Moreover, gulls had come here previously.
GULL
But this time, our arrival was auspicious.
MORMON
Furthermore, gulls supposedly gorged and regurgitated repeatedly.
GULL
Well, we do puke the prickly parts.
MORMON
And finally, few pioneers recorded this supposedly heaven-sent event.
CRICKET
Does that mean nothing actually happened?
MORMON
What is the truth?
SCENE 7
GULL
Facts express one kind of truth.
CRICKET
Myths reveal other truths.
MORMON
Such as?
CRICKET
Humans must live in accord with nature.
GULL
Shared stories and struggles bind communities.
MORMON
Say more.
CRICKET
For crickets, farmers meant a bounty.
GULL
For gulls, crickets meant a bounty.
CRICKET & GULL
For people—what did crickets mean?
MORMON
For Mormons, hunger; for Indians, food. It depends…
GULL
When the student is ready…
CRICKET
the teacher will come.
SCENE 8
CRICKET
So, can anyone know what happened in 1848?
MORMON
I guess not.
GULL
Two versions: One is objective, filled with scientific facts—
CRICKET
and generates certainty.
GULL
The other is enchanting, filled with human drama—
CRICKET
and evokes wonder.
MORMON
Which should I believe?
GULL
Both have a place and time.
CRICKET
For you, here and now, why not accept the one…
GULL/ALL
that is most beautiful?
******************************************************
SACRED CLOWN
An Opera in One Act and Four Scenes
Elizabeth Brooks, Mother
Joshua Zabatta, Grandson
Armando Contreras, Grandfather
__________________________________
SCENE 1
GRANDSON
Grandfather will be here soon, mother. We must talk sense into him.
GRANDFATHER
The usual, dear. Easy—I have a plane to catch.
GRANDSON
Every year, you accept such misery.
GRANDFATHER
I do.
GRANDSON
Why travel to the arctic? Why carry ice down from Denali? Why wedge it into the soil?
GRANDFATHER
The climate is warming. The tundra is dying.
GRANDSON
He is being a fool!
MOTHER
A sacred clown of the First Nations. Like his grandfather was for the Caribou Clan.
GRANDSON
A court jester?
MOTHER
A contrarian. Mocking those in power. Asking difficult questions. Saying what others cannot.
GRANDSON
But nobody hears you in the wilderness.
GRANDFATHER
There are many ways to speak—many ways to be heard.
GRANDSON
The tundra doesn’t care. It took half your toes.
GRANDFATHER
It is the nature of the arctic to inflict suffering. It is my nature to care, to try.
GRANDSON
You cannot win. Moving blocks of ice will not save the land. Admit defeat!
SCENE 2
MOTHER
Remember the game against Teton High School?
GRANDSON
Our worst defeat.
MOTHER
Fifty-seven to eight at halftime. Your teammates wanted to forfeit. And you said?
GRANDSON
I’d rather lose by a hundred than quit.
GRANDFATHER
It was only seventy-four in the end!
MOTHER
You lost the game. But you didn’t lose your dignity—
GRANDFATHER and MOTHER
your character—your integrity.
SCENE 3
MOTHER
We will never vanquish hatred, hunger, heartbreak.
GRANDFATHER and MOTHER
Or subdue greed, poverty, loneliness.
GRANDSON
We are destined to fail?
GRANDFATHER
No, to succeed.
GRANDSON
At what?
GRANDFATHER
Trying the impossible. Defying the bastards. Refusing to lose heart.
GRANDSON
When is the struggle complete?
MOTHER
Caring never ends.
SCENE 4
GRANDSON
And so, we are forever burdened.
MOTHER
As was Sisyphus.
GRANDSON
Perhaps pushing the boulder eventually wears down the hill.
MOTHER
And if not?
GRANDFATHER
Then the work shapes us.
MOTHER
If the hill of wickedness erodes,
GRANDFATHER
It will be wonderful.
GRANDSON
If not?
GRANDFATHER
To understand what the world needs, I see the melting glaciers, the dying tundra. To sustain myself, I look inside.
ALL
So, we cannot make the world just. But neither can it make us despair.
*****************************************************************************
MERCY KILLING
An Opera in One Act and Four Scenes
Elizabeth Brooks, Bartender
Joshua Zabatta, Man
Armando Contreras, Cougar
____________________________________
SCENE 1
BARTENDER
You look rode hard and put away wet.
MAN
I need a beer.
BARTENDER
Two bucks. One, if you tell your story.
MAN
I was driving the county road… going too fast…
BARTENDER
Sounds about right.
MAN
When this big cat jumped in front of me…
BARTENDER
‘Big cat’?
MAN
A cougar, ma’am. I swerved but…
BARTENDER
But what, hon?
MAN
A hard thud. I got out, and there it was…
SCENE 2
COUGAR
… Lying in a ditch—panting in pain. A jagged leg bone tore through my skin. I bared my teeth. Hiss…
MAN
I backed away and saw why he was so close to the road. A wounded deer …
COUGAR
… Browsing in the twilight. When I broke her back.
MAN and COUGAR
Now she scrabbled through the grass, eyes bulging with fear.
BARTENDER
Half-dead, eh?
MAN
Like the cat. I got my pistol from the glovebox.
BARTENDER
To end the suffering?
MAN
Exactly. But when I opened the cylinder, there was a single bullet.
BARTENDER
Just one?
SCENE 3
MAN
I’d been target shooting with my brother-in-law. We talked about my divorce. How my anger drove her away. How her affair consumed me. How I couldn’t concentrate. How the foreman fired me.
BARTENDER
I know this story, hon, doesn’t end well …
COUGAR
… Not for him, Not for me.
MAN
My rage from betrayal, from working so hard, from seeing others with so much…
BARTENDER
Let me guess. Boats, cars, ATVs.
MAN
That’s why I bought a truck—a Ford F-450 Super Duty—That we couldn’t afford …
COUGAR
To proclaim his confidence, his cockiness, his cajones.
MAN
That God damned Ford. Our final fight. I hit her. She left. I went shooting.
BARTENDER
And forgot to reload your gun.
MAN
Just one bullet …
SCENE 4
COUGAR
He slumped down, against the bumper, spattered with my blood.
MAN
I could hear the terrible panting, of the cat; the terrified flailing, of the deer …
COUGAR
I could hear the shuddering sobs of the man.
MAN
I had to decide—
BARTENDER
—how to use your one shot.
MAN
A shattered animal or…
BARTENDER
Or what?
MAN
Or what caused the misery.
BARTENDER
Theirs and yours?
MAN
Maybe everyone’s.
COUGAR
A gunshot. I startled and growled, then pulled myself into the woods. The deer shivered and wheezed, then dragged herself into the weeds.
MAN
Did I finally get something right? Can you kill pride, greed, lust, and envy? I wondered with every step, walking from there to here.
BARTENDER
You walked?
MAN / ALL
Well ma’am, you can’t drive a truck with a bullet in engine.
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