opera as you've never experienced it...
Orchestration
Mixed quintet with electronics and field recordings of tectonic phenomena.
REQUIEM IN RED
The Volcanic Life of Katia Krafft
music: Kirsten Volness libretto: Germaine Shames
Katia Krafft, the most famous female volcanologist of the 20th century, passionately loved volcanoes and spent more than two decades crisscrossing the globe to study and film their eruptions. Venturing closer to their vortex than any other scientist dared, Katia (along with husband Maurice) captured breathtaking video footage of 150 active volcanoes while conducting groundbreaking on-site research. Much of what scientists know today about these fire-spewing behemoths derives from the Kraffts’ formidable body of work.
In 1991, Katia’s obsession with volcanoes cost her the remainder of her life. Not yet 50 years old, she raced to Japan for the eruption of Mt. Unzen, lingering on the volcano’s flank long after more cautious scientists had fled. With sudden ferocity the sleeping giant reared up and released an apocalypse of burning lava. Katia, caught in a fast-moving pyroclastic flow of doomsday proportions, died alongside her husband.
What to make of the cut-short life of Katia Krafft? Was she a martyr to the advancement of science or one more casualty of a dangerous love affair? What might have been her last fleeting thought as Unzen took her?
Cast of Characters
Katia Conrad Krafft: trailblazing volcanologist; age 15 through 49; mezzo-soprano
Pele: goddess of volcanoes; eternally in her prime; soprano
Maurice Krafft: enterprising volcanologist and media personality; age 20 through 45; baritone
Chorus: a fluid SATB body of performers who assume roles as needed — Pele's attendants, wedding guests, a nurse, a doctor, colleagues, journalists, tourists etc.
Sample Scenes
ACT ONE, PROLOGUE
Circa 1964. A teenage Katia lies sleeping in her bed with an open book spread across her bodice. Into her dream sweeps the imperious Pele, trailed by the chorus, attendants who hold aloft the train of her gown.
PELE
Katia. Katia, wake up.
Katia, continuing to sleep, turns her back on the goddess.
PELE
Sound sleeper, this mortal. Katia!
CHORUS
She dreams like the rock of ages.
PELE
In my presence, even the rocks dare not sleep.
Pele prods the sleeping Katia awake. Sound of a volcano OMINOUSLY RUMBLING toward eruption.
KATIA
(jolts awake)
Qui est là?
PELE
Look deep into the darkness. Into night’s ebony coil.
KATIA
I see no one, nothing.
Pele, imperious, brightly illumines the set with a wave of her hand.
LIGHTS UP (RED-HOT TO SUGGEST MOLTEN LAVA)PELE
PELE
And now?
KATIA
You blind me. You steal my breath. Has the world caught fire?
PELE
It is your soul that ignites.
KATIA
I burn inside. I hardly know myself.
PELE
From this moment forward, you’ll burn for ME. Your sovereign, your nemesis, your god will I be.
KATIA
Such exquisite terror. Such ecstasies of destruction.
PELE
No mortal can fathom the depths of my fury. There’s but one thing you need to know: Tread too close and I will devour you.
KATIA
Have you a name?
PELE
Pele, they call me.
KATIA
Goddess of volcanoes. You're in this book.
PELE
(piqued, snatches the book)
Let me see that. Ha! What does some white man with a beard know of eruption and rebirth? Vulcan he idolizes, while I fade into a footnote. As if a volcano could be other than female... With a womb so deep.
KATIA
And a tongue of fire.
PELE
(aside)
The girl has wit and knows no fear.
KATIA
(aside)
The goddess lures me where heaven meets hell. Is this a dream? Or has destiny found me?
PELE
Silly girl, it was you who conjured me. We islanders are kind to strangers — to our detriment. Tread lightly, child, lest my lenience turn wrath.
KATIA
I wish only to serve you.
CHORUS
And so began a love affair neither myth nor science could fathom. Into Pele's burning chasm she could not wait to plunge.
KATIA
(sings 1."Strange Ecstasies")
I’m still young
I have a thousand dreams
It seems as if I’ll never settle down
A bit strange
Compared to other girls
My world’s lit up with majesty unbound
All fear has left my body
I’m strangely in the grip
Of forces I can neither see nor name
I need no hell nor heaven
I barely touch the earth
Strange ecstasies consume me like a flame
PELE
You’re ready, child, to venture
Where others fear to tread
Bled of worldly notions, you will soar
I’ll neither spoil nor tame you
No mother will I be
You dreamers are but fire at your core
You’re ready, child
Ready, child
KATIA
I’m still young
The world’s a mystery
And we but pilgrims searching for the light
A bit lost
In the immensity
Pale dreams rise up fine-tethered as a kite
All fear has left my body
I’m breathlessly awake
To wonders only science can explain
I need no hell nor heaven
I barely touch the earth
Is that my future written in your flames?
Let others run! I’ll soar free in your flames
BLACKOUT
ACT TWO, SCENE FOUR
June 6, 1991. The flank of Mt. Unzen overlooking the volcano's molten dome. Katia and Maurice, absorbed in recording the volcano's erratic stirrings, shift vantage point, moving ever closer to the caldera. Chorus members representing journalists and local tourists narrate.
CHORUS
(sing 15. "A Natural History of Calamity")
For two hundred years Unzen lay sleeping
Around her grew cities, smug with life's commerce
And though the mount rumbled, none seemed to hear her
Prayers at death's shrine rendered them reckless
Like tourists they clamored awaiting doom's carnival
Amid the melee, Katia labored oblivious
No sign, no omen altered her course
Was the sky less blue for boding calamity?
The scent of chrysanthemums less giddy, less sweet?
Would you or I have noticed the tremor
Raging down deep?
PELE
The tremor sent a billion tons of magma surging to Unzen's surface. A sea of lava broke from her flanks, branching in two. One flow bypassed Katia and Maurice as they toiled. The second reared up and charged straight toward them.
KATIA
What light!
MAURICE
What grandeur! We're back at the beginning of time.
KATIA
(oddly calm)
Take my hand. Remember, Maurice, how you once dreamed of racing down the lava seas in a titanium boat, snug inside a titanium boat —
MAURICE
With all our family and friends waving as we pass —
KATIA
Flying the French flag, we glide, unscathed, into the ocean. How gaily we drift...
MAURICE
Never once looking back.
KATIA
Never once looking back. I do believe, Maurice, that we'll meet again and again...
MAURICE
To reprise our wedding dance to this Requiem in Red.
CHORUS
Too soon the glowing avalanche engulfed them
Their moment of reckoning one deafening heartbeat
Husband and wife never lost sight of each other
Their two souls having merged at the secret heart of the earth
PELE
As was their wish.
KATIA
If you've come to justify your carnage...
PELE
Obstinate child, I've come to mourn you. To gather your ashes and take them home. Nothing remains but to make your peace.
KATIA
(draws herself up and sings 16. "Release Me")
Release me, death, from the fire I cannot quench
You, whom I have worshipped
Life pales beside your fury
Deep beneath the Earth are forces beyond reckoning
How dark and sweet they beckon
And so I go
Release me, fire, from this body that can’t hold me
You, whom I have courted
Inching toward oblivion
Deep beneath the Earth is beauty beyond reckoning
Blinding me, it beckons And so I go
My heaven is the rim of a belching red volcano
My heaven hangs suspended between one breath and the next
If longing does not kill me, take me deep inside your furnace
Melt me with your mercy
Melt me with your mercy
Melt me with your mercy then set me free
Release me, death, from the fire I can’t quench
You, whom I have worshipped
Consummate and holy
Deep beneath the Earth wait forces beyond reckoning
How dark and sweet they beckon
And so I go
And so I go
END OF SAMPLE