Romance of the Rose (Excerpt)

Inspired by the bizarre and audacious thirteenth-century poem of the same name, The Romance of the Rose mixes medieval and contemporary allegory to dramatize the ways in which love, sex, and music wreak havoc on our sense of self. Lulled into a dreamlike state by a seductive M.C., “The Dreamer,” the members of the audience follow their modern-day avatar “The Lover” into a surreal landscape brimming with riddles. On a mission for the conquest of a literal rose, The Lover meets The God of Love, Lady Reason, Shame, and their retinues, but as the fable unfolds, these allegorical figures begin to warp, revealing the fractured sense of identity at the core of all human experience. Meanwhile, the music itself for this opera in two acts and two epilogues—with its modernistic shrieks and wails, madrigalistic finery, auto-tuned didacticism, and lush Romanticism—freely beguiles, charms, and terrifies with no moral allegiances. Le Roman...