I wrote a song, or music-drama, which could be sung, a la Richard Wagner, the Ring Cycle, or Mythological Opera (in the vein of Richard Strauss' Electra). The style of the music would be a synthesis of a Beethoven Quartet and Mahler (or Bruckner) Symphony. In fact, if you chose Beethoven's Quartet number fifteen, and then played Mahler's sixth symphony (first movement) at the same time, it would sound like that.
The lyrics approximate blank verse, though as the piece proceeds, a rhyming pattern enters in, gradually.
This takes its point of departure from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, though it takes place in a geometrically limited environment, with a cast of mostly comic characters. This section is supposed to provide some weight, against which the comic elements can be contrasted.
If you have some music you want to put together with this let me know.
It could even be a rock opera, like William Shatner's Julius Caesar.
Here is the whole scene from the play:
ACT II scene i
A Mountain Crag in the Caucasus. The Titan Prometheus is bound to the Rock by an adamantine wedge, pounded into his bare chest. His legs and hands are manacled securely.
[Enter Linguistio, stage right, creeping along the ground, he looks up, sees Prometheus, and hides behind a rock]
PROMETHEUS
I, PROMETHEUS, prophesied one day we all would know the future can not be predicted. Today, my augury has been fulfilled. Come to me now, Hermes, messenger of Zeus Supreme-- the time for my release approaches. My torments soon will end.
(Enter Hermes, dressed in winged sandals, with casadeusus, and other Olympian accoutrements).
HERMES
I arrive in answer to your call. Do you finally repent, accúrsed Titan,
Your defiance of all-seeing Zeus, King of gods and men? Will you yield up
All your knowledge to Zeus, so that his eternal tyranny will remain secure
Over all of heaven, earth, and underworld?
PROMETHEUS
When I was bound to this Caucasian rock-- and made to suffer noon's ravaging heat,
The morning's icy dew, and the cruel beak of Zeus's eagle, as it tore daily at my liver,
That healed itself, to be torn again on the morrow-- I made this vow: never would I Relent 'til Zeus begged me to reveal the secret to stall his overthrowing.
HERMES
Zeus does not beg, but assigns that chore to all others.
PROMETHEUS
The Master of High Olympus sends you quickly here not just for my repentance.
When I became the oracle that said no more omens would knowledge of the future bring, When I foresaw that all foreseeing would fruitless be, and when I was proven right,
Only then did Zeus dispatch you to my crag of torment.
HERMES
How, then, have you been proven right?
PROMETHEUS
*I have discerned that all forecasts will be in vain,
that all prognostications-- based on bird's entrails,
the moanings of the Pythia, and the sacrifice of
rooster, bull or horse-- will fail to bring desired knowledge.
HERMES (a bit nervously)
Yet the people s-still come to Dodona, Delphi . . . and Didyma . . .
PROMETHEUS
You lisp your list of oracles with starts and stutters
Like a stunted idiot bereft of hope for self or others.
You are at a loss.
HERMES
So your torments have not taught you wisdom by degrees,
But have made you more arrogant, rash, and full of hubris.
You claim that you and you alone have the key to future knowledge.
PROMETHEUS
Have you inquired of Apollo and Artemis, or Metis, the voice in Zeus' stomach--
Or have you asked the fruit of Zeus' mind, grey and cataract-eyed Athena,
Whom you released from his skull, with the famed hammer,
As he, a god, begged to be cured of sharp pains that racked his head?
Who has answered the question, how may Zeus be overthrown, so
Universal dominion might pass to another god, even greater than he?
**
(silence)
HERMES
No one dares ask that, much less think it.
Though you may dare, you cannot know.
PROMETHEUS
Thus, you admit, with Zeus omnipotence and omniscience part ways;
He can do all but not know all, which means he cannot do but with fear
That of which the resulting choice he cannot but fail to know,
Thus failing in both doing and knowing.
HERMES
Is it with clownish paradoxes such as these that you hope to be released?
PROMETHEUS
If Zeus can do all, and if he knows all, then let him do.
HERMES
He will not need your permission.
PROMETHEUS
But if he can do all, and not know all, then keep him from doing,
'lest in doing all, without sufficient knowledge, he falls to his doom.
Do you think the Fates are three mere women, playing with cords--
Unwinding, measuring, and snipping-- with no plan for their hoards
Of thread, which correspond to the lives of beasts, men, and gods?
HERMES
Ruler's lives Olympian are not by Fates enfettered, but Zeus
Gives orders to [Moira to] wind this way, measure so far, and cut a thread
As he directs. Thus will Troy fall, Achilles die, and Helen sail home.
Whatever men may hope and wish for, these specific ends are known.
PROMETHEUS
Where then is hid that strand of twine that laid out the path of Zeus
From Rhea's womb to life on high? Zeus was born; we know the date: he lived
On Crete a puling babe, and could not make his guiding thread himself, in sooth,
Before his birth. Who keeps now that fibrous yarn if not the Fates?
HERMES
We have heard you say you know how Zeus could avert a doom,
Prevent usurpation by a new upstart god sprung from the womb
Of some unknown nymph or Titaness whose destiny makes her son
Greater than the father, a power who the entire world will stun
With force ne’er seen before.
PROMETHEUS
But why should you assume . . .?
HERMES
Enough banter! Give up that name of the daughter of gods
Whose dangerous conception cannot be allowed; or suffer dire bolts
Made by Cyclops for Zeus' hand, to punish those like you, oddly
Defying Pantheon's decree that Zeus ne'er shall see revolt.
(distant flashes of lightning, soft rumbling sounds of thunder, seconds after.)
PROMETHEUS
Tell Zeus :
Strike my deathless frame with a thousand thunderous jolts;
I will not speak the name you fear, 'til my release be granted.
HERMES
I say then:
Damn yourself to unceasing pains; 'til like a crushéd serpent molting countless
Skins, your frame be flailed and your mind with pride be disenchanted.
(exit Hermes)
[Scene grows slowly dark, brighter flashes of light, louder peals of thunder, as Prometheus is seen, only when light flashes on his face, writhing in torment. Lightning gradually subsides. A faint red glow remains focused on Prometheus backstage]
--end of scene--
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