Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera

PROGRAM NOTE

OVERTURE

Aria: “Our pool is winter-covered”

On with the overture:

Duet of sorts: “Becalmed, plateaued, suspended”

Extended aria: “Suspended passage”

Aria: “Why not?”

Duet: “Let’s do it”

Semi-explicatory aria: “Weak Chaos”

Extended aria: “This old binder. This old pen”

Uncompleted aria: “Our marsh, our marsh”

A floating aria: “Water-messages”

Aria: “What are we doing here?”

Distracted aria: “Bad J Good J”

Trianglish aria:

Unprogrammed aria: “Sturm und Drang”

Mini-duet: “It’s not that easy”

Mini-soliloquy: “What do we do now?”

Unsung duet: “Sure it can.”

Reprise: “Calmed, becalmed”

Preludial coda: “I know these waters... and yet...”

INTERLUDE

Aria: “This is a story I’ve told before”

On with the interlude:

ACT 1

Prospective arietta: “Whoops indeed: This new old pen”

Aria: “What I’ve noticed, reader”

Interrupted aria: “Affectionate loyalty; benign passivity. The best complexion”

Insistent aria: “Of course we do”

Not an aria: “Gawdam cunt!”

Aria: “The mother of all fiction”

Monologue faute de mieux: The brawlbrat brawl

Interruptive, tear-blinded aria: “Oatmeal: ‘He jests at scars’”

Exegetical aria-within-an-aria: “Jack and Jill”

Oatmeal aria resumed and concluded: “My mark”

ENTR’ACTE

Obscured trivial aria: “Y”

ACT 2

Drum solo: “Cunt-shy”

Time-out aria: Two-STEP

Narrative aria: “Wunderjahr”

Unwashed Freudian smegma-flake arietta: “Aha”

Okay: On with Act 2

Duty-do aria: “The Ur-myth, yes”

Ur-myth wrap-up aria: “‘Straight through the maze,’” almost

“The Rome of Saint Jerome”: expository catch-up aria

Two-part disharmony, Splitsville unduet, story too banal to tell: “Mmp”

“Perhaps for lovers.” End-of-196os aria:

BETWEEN ACTS

An arietta resung: “Plato has Socrates teach”

ACT 3 (OF 2)

Reprise: “What am I doing here?”

Semi-(but only semi-)sheepish, semi-(ditto-)explanatory semi-aria or -duet: “As best I can”

Rescuaria: “May I... ?”

Calendrical-error-assisted narrative Doppler-Effect aria: “On 12 October 1990”

The end of this opera, almost. Let me explain:

EPISONG

Aria: “Dante’s Dante”

Reprised duet: “Gone”