At the beginning of Section XII of the little night opera “Beyond” AKA “Jenseits”, written for my mother Catherine Gayer (catch up on previous installments via the opera’s main page), the 1st Angel takes on the persona of the 4th man in the limbo-straddling opera singer’s life-in-review: her Therapist.

The main piano accompaniment figure, usually heard moving chromatically in severe octaves, is now transformed into a jaunty, jazzy syncopation. The Therapist is a blowhard played for comic effect, but that doesn’t mean he is wrong when he complains that the Woman spends her therapy sessions avoiding the real issues in her life, instead speaking of daily banalities. The Therapist’s prompts may evoke potent images or memories in the Woman, but she keeps those to herself, and considers the Therapist a “pseudo-expert”, a “bullshit-artist”.

It doesn’t help that he falls asleep in the middle of her session.

Other than making the Woman an opera singer, librettist and family friend Helga Krauss is not telling my mother’s or our family’s story in the scenes she writes. That said, a few incidentals are taken from life. For example, my mother really does put bowls of beer out in the garden in order to keep slugs and snails away from her greens. Attracted by the beer odor the slime-trailing invaders drown in pools of ale and the lettuce is spared.

The end of the therapy session ushers in Section XIII, a scene with Husband and Son, played by the 1st and 2nd Angel respectively. Halloween is celebrated in a game of blind man’s bluff that in all its playfulness nonetheless exposes fissures in the family’s domesticity.

Variations of the son’s lullaby are played above a jingly version of the Husband’s metronomic accompaniment.

Finally the lullaby theme becomes a chiming fanfare as the Woman celebrates the “Holy Trinity” of her family.

Nonetheless the Woman still feels that longing first intoned in Section XI, “die Sehnsucht” in the German text, that unceasing sense of not feeling fulfilled.

XII

German Language Studio Recording

English Language Live Concert Recording

XII

The woman with her therapist (1. Angel)

THERAPIST
She comes every Tuesday. Tuesdays at Four. Usually she’s in blue. Elegant. Blue must be her favorite color. A pretty woman. When I first saw her,
I thought, like a damsel fly amongst house flies. Somehow she is not tangible. She eludes you. She says she doesn’t know who she is. That’s why she comes to me. She is a split personality. I shall weld her into wholeness.

WOMAN
Snails – so many snails in the garden

They eat my lettuce leaves
I pour beer in buckets to drown them all

(another world) Rocket flares flying in spirals around in my head

My thoughts rise and blow up like water bubbles

THERAPIST
Trivialities. Banalities. I think she wants to fool me. Keep me in the dark. Is she making fun of me?

WOMAN
Just a half a cup of flour, one teaspoon of baking salts, then beat up two egg whites, add a half a cup of honey
My son loves brownies, chocolate chip brownies
I put in walnuts, walnuts, maybe almonds

THERAPIST
Hmm…what does that remind you of?

WOMAN
Connections. He always wants to make connections. Prove something or another.

Pseudo-expert, Smarty-pants, Bullshit-artist!

THERAPIST
What did you dream of last night?

WOMAN
A cornfield, a purple fence with a tiny gate
I gingerly approach
At the opposite side I see a man
He’s coming right at me
He waves
But something is pulling me back like a drain I want to scream
My voice…I lost my voice!

The Therapist snores.

2. ANGEL
Sweet dreams my darling

Sweet dreams my love

WOMAN
I feel like killing him

Lips as red as blood!

2. ANGEL
Sweet dreams my darling

Sweet dreams my love

THERAPIST
(sleepily) She is a split personality. I shall weld her into wholeness.

WOMAN
I am that which always was

Which always is

And always will be

2. ANGEL
Formlessness dances with form

XIII

German Language Studio Recording

English Language Live Concert Recording

HUSBAND
Rejected due to prejudice…the suit cannot be granted…case dismissed.

WOMAN
Your honor, I object.

One, two, three outside now – Everyone must hide now
Right of me and left of me cannot be

Crescendo, letting go now

The family plays Blind Man’s Bluff. Husband and Son wear blindfolds.

WOMAN
mmm…
Hot, hot, yes, still hotter
No, cold, who’ll be the one to win

SON
Me, Mama
I search, but don’t know what. I can’t find it.

WOMAN
Hot, hot, hot – always getting hotter

I lead the way and you fly

SON
I’ve lost it for ever.

WOMAN
Have a fun Halloween

Husband finds a pumpkin and holds it up triumphantly.

HUSBAND
Crystal clear insight!

Grasping reality with pinpoint precision!

WOMAN
Father, mother, son

My holy trinity

Father, mother, son

My holy trinity

And there came the day
That she would bear him children

And she gave birth to her only son

And swaddled him tight in diapers

And laid him gently in his cradle

SON
I want to be a ghost!

WOMAN
For there is the longing that never leaves me
I thought that a family would have fulfilled me

But still the longing, it stays

Singing about longing invariably whisks the Woman back to the Lover.

But this time it ain’t gonna be pretty.

… Stay tuned.