Excerpts from DieciGiorni:10DAYS

The opera was a collaborative piece and these are my bits, so don't hold them against my colleagues, they are my responsibility. We start with a section of Boccaccio's Proem, a difficult-to-stomach description of the terrors of the plague in Florence spoken by the master actor Robert Ernst. Interspersed between is my commentary, sung by the identical twins William Sauerland and Crystal Philippi.



And then, a contemporary description by Gabriele de' Mussi, in an edited translation by George Deaux.



With Roham Shaikhani looking on, it is followed by a short poem of mine about the finality of death.



An exact transcription of a dear friend's bachelorette party in Las Vegas is then somehow shoehorned into the opera, but a beautiful story it is, and look at those wigs.



The whole mess was directed by the fabulous Jim Cave and conducted by the master Martha Stoddard.