Augusteia Description

 Dear All, I present for you my 1976 opera;  

"Augusteia" Description

The Augusteia is an opera named after Augee, one of its two main characters. I began writing it in April of 1976 after completing a piano score for "Hasty Recovery," a performance piece for a male and a female vocalist. Because I was comfortable with the approach in "Hasty Recovery," in which two voices represent shades of one person, I invented two closely related characters, Augee and Lisa, brother and sister, to feature in the main roles for a three-act opera.

Act One:

The opera begins with Lisa, an intense young lady, exclaiming, "Kin's dead! Money's gone! Kin's dead. We must go on." She and Augee, her even younger, autistic brother, are left to care for themselves. While Augee, who is tense and disturbed, lays upon Lisa's lap, Lisa calms him. Once sure he's asleep, she reveals her own insecurity, asking,

How can I bear such an earthquake of change,

An alteration of all that I hold so dear?

So like a dress that I'm expected to knit,

It is I it must fit;

It is I who must change.

Rather than fight circumstance, she adjusts to it, on one condition concerning Augee:

That young boy, he won't be lost

What e'er the pain, what e'er the cost.

For him the future will unpage the same

Despite these several lines of change!

After declaring her uncompromising stand on her brother's future well-being, she falls asleep. Augee awakens.

Augee applies creative analysis to his condition. So, too, did Lisa, but unlike her, Augee sees his life as ruled by fate (which includes magic).

He sings, "Someday when the clouds rub up against the moon, several charms will shower upon this life of gloom."

Augee's words invoke tensions which he hopes will snap. He can not stand "Atmospheric Stillness," -- the subtitle of the song. What he denies, and what the audience will not know until the climax of this act, is that a tense situation has snapped and, at this point, both he and Lisa are its leftovers.

By contemplating suicide, Augee expects to bring to world attention the confusing life of a boy unsure of whether he is a dominant or passive (sub-dominant) personality (I wrote an essay which considers this phenomenon as a choice between being an outlet and a socket, called "Horse and Man".). In Augee's longings he has:

Seen some lovely boys

And heard them make soundless noises.

As the pendulum swings. It wrecks their

personality.

Quite frankly they really don't know

If they want to be on

Top or on bottom,

Poke or be poked at.

In conclusion, he decides that, unlike anyone, masculine, feminine or otherwise, his preference is "to walk through life like a Frankenstein." He sees himself as an adolescent monster, befriending whoever will tolerate him.

Lisa, her sleep disturbed by the increasing noise of Augee's soliloquy, yells, "That's quite right. You can't help but be stupidly insulting." She announces a real course of action. In order to support them, she is willing to get a job.

In scene 2, "... Lisa secures herself a job." The pride she takes in having a skill (she makes dolls) is expressed as follows: "Give me stuffin', socks and buttons. The results are rather nice."

She visits the town shoemaker and offers to set up shop with him. He is reluctant but, with the assistance of a small chorus of customers, she persuades him. He employs her as a cleaning lady who, if she has time, can make all the dolls she wants.

A ballet sequence parallels Lisa's outing with her family's outings of the past.

Having accomplished the day's purpose, Lisa retreats home. Scene 3 opens with her return. She is bushed, and she treats this unique day not as a first, but rather as though it is part of an already intolerable routine. However, Augee makes it all worthwhile because, through her efforts, he will become her "professional dear," i.e., a doctor or a lawyer.

Augee is silently enraged. To upset Lisa's plans, he mentions their father and their elder brother, Matthew. Lisa cries out and a flashback begins. Matthew appears as an invalid resting in a giant easy chair.

The flashback answers the following:

1) How did Augee and Lisa come to live in a hole?

It is the burnt out cellar of their parents home,

2) How did they become orphans?

Their brother burned down the house the night before,

and

3) Why did they survive?

Matthew ordered them to leave before he torched the living room.

An elderly next door neighbor, Mrs. Crawdles, hears commotion and reports it to the police. The police visit the ruins and find Augee and Lisa. At the police station Mrs. Crawdles offers them her home while they await adoption.

End of Act One

Act Two:

Mrs. Crawdles is bursting with love for Augee and Lisa, because she is bursting from within with a child which she has carried for 20 years and to which she refuses to give birth. When Mrs. Crawdles finally does gives birth (Augee falls on her.) she loves her offspring and snarls at Augee and Lisa.

Meanwhile, Augee and Lisa plan concurrent parties at Mrs. Crawdles house, Lisa, to return the invitations of her many scholarship friends, Augee, to exclude one of his many orphan friends, the one who never returned his call.

Their friends intermingle like oil and vinegar, so they occupy separate levels of the house -- Lisa uses the living room; Augee, the basement -- but the friends are forced to mix when the smell from Mrs. Crawdles "nursery" drives Lisa's friends downstairs, and one by one, drives everyone from the house. Augee and Lisa do damage to their reputations by guiltily refusing to acknowledge any problem in the house.

Lisa leads Augee to the shoe store. They enter using her keys and sleep till morning when the shoemaker arrives.

Act Three:

The shoe maker advises Augee and Lisa to think for themselves, settle their estate and depart. He is teaching them a lesson and, at the same time, doing them the favor of denying them his company, because he likes them and fears the horror in store for them as a result of his liking them. Augee loves the shoemaker (He loves anyone with the patience to instruct him) and grows dependent. Lisa wants to leave and asks Augee to join her. He supports her plan but says no to joining her. Sensing her anticipation of a free, unhindered life, he easily persuades the shoemaker to help cripple her upon the moment of her departure. Augee continues his actions, i.e., tripping and kicking Lisa, even after they achieve his purpose and soon they strengthen her. She sprouts jet engines and fins and departs on schedule.

The shoemaker warned that he was a bad influence, and that Augee and Lisa must leave for their own good. Augee, lazy and weakened by his desire to break Lisa, stays.

At the end of the first two acts, external forces uprooted the growth of Augee and Lisa. In Act Three, Lisa grows and Augee is uprooted.