THE DEATH OF ISAIAH ROBB

A chamber opera based on a poems by American Civil War Era poets.

This music is published by Fabrique Musicale, Paris

SCORE

SYNOPSIS

Scene One:

The stage is dark.

The Bard, (seen in a spotlight on far left stage) entreats the moon to light the world and reveal the carnage of the war.  The Father of Isaiah Robb, is seen left stage in an unassuming domestic setting.  He is reading a newspaper which features headlines announcing an impending conflict and in so doing he relates aloud his despair and concern.  Isaiah enters and eventually interrupts his Father’s musings to inform him that he has enlisted in the local regiment.  The Father reluctantly gives him leave, pledging responsibility for his son’s family.  He eventually continues his musings about the transpiring events, now with a heightened sense of concern and worry for his son.  The Bard is now seen again (in a spotlight centerstage) and describes in detail the horrors of the insurrection. 
Fade to black 

Scene Two:

Isaiah Robb, is seen lying face-up on the ground (upstage), now a silent casualty of the war, with two officers (Father and the Bard, now as the Captain and the Lieutenant with minimal military attire) standing over him.  They are preparing the body for interment amid the frenzy of the front lines (they are assisted by two or three enlistees who dig the grave).  They attempt to perform some type of ‘liturgy’ for the deceased, although neither is prepared to officiate.  Occurring at interludes (downstage) within the officers dialogue, Margaret is receiving news from a honor guard about the death of her husband.  She is holding an infant child, and although distraught with grief, she maintains a stoic resolve.  Following the dialogue of the officers, she expresses her grief and concern that her lover and spouse will remember her when she joins him in the distant future life of eternity.
Fade to black.

Scene Three:
 
Isaiah Robb, now seen as a wraith, finds himself alone in a place unknown to him.  At first he is exuberant but soon becomes unsettled with his now unfamiliar surroundings .  As he tries to comprehend, a voice (chorus offstage) tells him of the world that he has departed, a bitter and desolate place.  Isaiah, now with reckoning, covers his face with his hands and weeps for despair.  Isaiah passes through this limbo state and describes a heavenly realm which is laid out before him.  As he leaves the stage (on his way to heaven), the Bard (in a spotlight on far rightstage) concludes the journey with a poignant, though brief word of reconciliation.
Fade to black.

In general, the action ‘processes’ from left stage to right stage.  Lighting should be stark, with much use of shadow and contrasting light to isolate the characters onstage.  Props can be minimal provided each ‘scene’ is distinctive.  Silence between scenes/sections, as noted in the score, will be most effective through the course of the drama. 

LIBRETTO

Scene One

The Bard: 
Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods
on faces ghastly,swollen, purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms tossed wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.  (Whitman)
   
Father: 
O, the clammy cold November,
And the winter white and dead,
And the terror dumb with stupor,
And the sky a sheet of lead;
And events that came resounding
With a cry that All was lost
Like the thunder cracks of massy ice
In intensity of frost,
Bursting upon one another
Through the horror of the calm.
The paralysis of arm
In the anguish of the heart;
And the hollowness and dearth.
The appealings of the mother
To brother and to brother
Not in hatred so to part,
And the fissure in the hearth
Growing momently more wide.
Then the glances ‘tween the Fates,
And the doubt on every side,
And the patience under gloom
In the stoniness that waits
The finality of doom. (Melville) 

Isaiah Robb: 
Father, a regiment has arrived in the town. 
I am going to join it. 
Please see to Margaret and the child until I return.

Father: 
Well, go, sir,
and whatever may occur do what you conceive to be your duty. 
I will inform your mother and provide for your family. 
Go, go, my son.

So the winter died despairing,
And the weary weeks of lent;
And the ice-bound rivers melted,
And the tomb of Faith was rent.
O, the rising of the People
Came with springing of the grass,
They rebounded from dejection
After Easter came to pass.
And the young were all elation
Hearing Sumter’s cannon roar,
And they thought how tame the nation
In the age that went before.
And Michael seemed gigantical,
The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;
And at the towers of Erebus
Our striplings flung the scoff.
But the elders with foreboding
Mourned the days forever o’er.
And recalled the forest proverb,
The Iroquois old saw:
Grief to every graybeard
When young Indians lead the war.  (Melville)

The Bard: 
Hear the reveille conjure war’s alarms.
Swift to its spell a shuddering hum
like distant thunder rolls,
Lo where the armed men hasten- Lo mid the clouds of
dust the glint of bayonets,
I see the grime faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash
amid the smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;
Nor war alone- thy fearful music-song, wild player,
brings every sight of fear
The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder, I hear
the cries for help!
I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below
the terrible tableaus.  (Whitman, adapted)

Scene Two

Three Soldiers: 
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the Battle-God, great, and His kingdom--
A field where a thousand corpses lie. (Crane)

Lieutenant: 
Isaiah Robb...he’s dead!...What will we do now?

Captain: 
Bury him.

Lieutenant: 
Don’t you think it would be better...
We might leave him until to-morrow...

Captain: 
No, I can’t hold this post an hour longer...
I’ve got to fall back... and we’ve got to bury him...now!

Lieutenant: 
Of course...your men got entrenching tools?

Captain: 
Dig here...

Lieutenant: 
I suppose we’d better search his clothes for things...

Captain: 
Yes, see what he’s got...
Go on...
Well, is that all?...
the Corp’-ral’s sword and revolver?

Lieutenant: 
Yes...

Hurry with that grave?
Hurry, do you hear? 
I never saw such stupid...
 
Well, we had best tumble him in...

Captain: 
It would be better if we laid him in ourselves...

Lieutenant: 
Yes, Sir...
We should say something...
Do you know the service?...

Captain: 
They don’t read the service until the grave is filled in...

Lieutenant: 
Don’t they?...
Oh, well...
let us say something anyway, while he can hear us...

Captain: 
All right...Do you know the service?

Lieutenant: 
I can’t remember a word of it...

Captain: 
I can repeat two lines, but...

Lieutenant: 
Well, do it!  It’s the best we can do...
Go as far as you can...

Captain: 
Attention! 
O Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death,
but his spirit has leaped toward thee as the bubble arises
from the lips of the drowning...
Perceive, we beseech,
O Father, the little flying bubble,
and...and...

Lieutenant: 
And from thy superb heights,
O God, have mercy...

Captain: 
Mercy...

Lieutenant: 
Mercy...

Captain: 
Mercy...
Throw the dirt in...

Three Soldiers: 
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped, and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain for them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie. (Crane)

Lieutenant: 
Go on, for God’s sake, and shovel, you!...
we can’t leave our intimate friends rotting in the fields...

Captain: 
Go to the rear! 

You get under cover, too! 
I’ll finish this business...

Lieutenant: 
Perhaps we’ve been wrong...
It might have been better...if...we hadn’t buried him now...
Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have been...

Captain: 
Damn you! 
Shut your mouth!...
Good God!...
Why didn’t you turn him somehow?...
when you put him in...
his face...upturned...

Lieutenant: 
Go on,...go on...[Upstage fade out.]

Three Soldiers: 
Do not weep. 
War is kind.  (Crane, adapted)
 
Margaret: 
How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
The disembodied spirits of the dead,
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
And perishes among the dust we tread?
For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
If there I meet thy gentle presence not,
Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,   
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?
In meadows fanned by heaven’s life-breathing wind,
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,  
And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
Shall it expire with life, and be no more?
A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will
In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell,
Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll;
And wrath hath left its scar (that fire of hell)
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
Yet, though thou wear’st the glory of the sky,
Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name,
The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
Lovelier in heaven’s sweet climate, yet the same?
Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this...
The wisdom which is love, till I become
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?  (Bryant)

Scene Three

Isaiah Robb: 
Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes tonight.

I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest around me,
Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.  (Whitman)

I hear a voice, But whence it comes I know not...
It cries aloud to me in a forgotten tongue,

Chorus:  
Immortal shadow of a mortal soul
That perished with eternity, attend.
What thou beholdest is as void as thou:
With all its desolation and its terrors-
Lo!  Tis but a phantom world.  For there
Red-handed murder rioted; and there
People gathered gold, nor cared to loose
The assassin’s fingers from the victim’s throat,
But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed:
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?  Let the Law
Look to the matter’.  But the Law did not.
And there, O pitiful!  The babe was slain
In its mother’s breast and the same grave
Held babe and mother; and the people smiled,
Still gathering gold, and said:  ‘The Law, the Law.”

Isaiah Robb: 
Then not to me comes any voice again;
And, covering my face with thin, dead hands,
I weep...  (Bierce, adapted)

Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
The fretting world, the streets,
the noisy hours of day withdraw,
A holy calm descends like dew upon me,
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise.
I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;
Thy song expands my numb’d, imbonded spirit
Thou freest, launchest me,
Floating and basking upon heavens lake.

The Bard: 
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must
in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly,
softly, wash again, this soiled world. (Whitman)

Libretto © 2002 by Frederick Frahm, all texts are in the public domain