Me:           Time to get started! So, welcome everybody, my name’s Steve, and this is what we call a focus group.

Me:           We will be discussing some current issues today, looking for creativity and insights. Please feel free to express your own opinions, and I as the moderator will work to facilitate a balanced discussion, so speak right up!

Me:           Does everyone have their nametag? Wonderful, wonderful. First names only, yes, very anonymous.

Giuseppe V: I miss my family.

Me:           That’s okay, we’ll be done soon, Giuseppe, and then you can go back home.

Giuseppe V: They have all died. I am filled with grief. My wife, and both my daughters, the newborn baby, and…

Me:           Very sorry to hear that. Maybe as time passes joy will return – your mind may even turn to comedy.

Joseph H: I will need to leave soon.

Me:           Well, Joseph, we’re hoping everyone can stay for at least…

Joseph H: The boss gave me an hour. Esterházy pays the bills, he calls the shots. Sorry.

Gioachino R: Ha ha ha!  What are we drinking? My God, let’s pick up the pace in here!

George Frideric H: I am here. I am here. I am here, in a chair. I am here.

Gioachino R: I know a damn funny joke about three Spanish guys who go for a haircut…

Me:           Fine, fine, but we must focus on the topics at hand. Maybe we’ll have time for stories if there’s a short intermission. But first, we need to do introductions, all around the table.

Me:           Sir, you can sit here, there are still a couple of chairs.

Richard W. Danke schoen. I prefer to stand, over here.

Me:           But really, the idea is to have a group discussion.

Richard W (from corner): You have merely average people, sitting around your table. I will watch from here, and see if anything fits my mood. I might leave. Those are just people, and I don’t know what religion.

Richard S: Hello? Excuse me, but I am uncomfortable. May I stand? My pants are very tight – look!

Me:           Richard, Richard S, those are very tight pants indeed, please sit back down, please!

Richard S: I touch myself.

Me:           No, no, please sit, and keep your hands up on the table.

Richard S: I need a very young woman. Or, a woman dressed as a boy.

Me:           I’m sorry, Richard, but we may have to ask you to leave. This is quite awkward.

Richard S (shifting chair sideways): Who are you, young man, may I ask? I like your face.

Vincenzo B: Please stay, at a distance, as the pleasures of life, the happiness of all, build strongly through friendship and love, as we work and we play, taking care through the ages, to learn what is best, to endure, to thrive, to finally find, with our friends and our lovers and all whom we cherish, forgiveness and freedom from fear.

Gioachino R: What? Good God. I brought some wine, actually. Who’s drinking?

Giuseppe V: But your friends and your lovers may die. Some, certainly, by their own hand.

Me:           Can we continue with the introductions? Who is next, you over there? Hello?

Claudio M: Hmmph? Me? Awake now. I am Claudio. I am very, very old. I can offer a story about the Greeks, some people who lived, like 3,000 years ago. Actually, not much happens.

Me:           Thank you, but just, we can get to the stories later.

Richard S: I can offer a story about a very young woman, who touches her father. She dances for him, and then …

Me:           Again, please, this is not the time for the stories, especially that kind. Also, let’s get a blanket or something, and you can put it across your lap.

George Frideric H: I know a song! Jingle jangle, jingle jangle, jingle jangle, jingle jangle. It’s better with a couple of harpsichords.

Richard W (shouting from corner): When do we get to the serious part? This is foolishness. The gods will banish sinners to hell for eternity.

Joseph H: Sorry, but they need me back at the castle. Mr. E says jump, I say how high.

Me:           Oh, hello! Yes, come right in, late, but no matter! And you brought your baby? So, the stroller can fit right over…  Are you, by chance, Jeanine T, from the Glimmerglass? Maybe Kaija S, from Finland?

Nannerl: Nein. I am Nannerl, and this is my brother. He is 3.

Me:           Well, alright, if he stays quiet enough, but I don’t have a Nannerl on my attendees list.

Richard S: She is young. She is soft. She may sit on me.

Wolfgang M (from stroller): Yes, at three, I can barely walk, thus the stroller. Still, I posit that a pleasing manifestation of lyrical arts, set to music, requires little more than a harpsichord, though we see instances in which a wider application of the timbres offered by winds, whether reeded or brass, construes in the perception of the listener an emotional response well enhanced beyond what was evidenced in the Baroque, an era constrained, in my opinion, by innate limitations of…

Me:           Yes, yes, thank you, so we will get back to you in a minute, little Wolfgang. Wow; he drinks milk from a bottle?

Gioachino R: Let’s give him some of what I brought, here. I actually have half a case in my bag. It’s not milk.

Me:           Giuseppe V, are you okay? Don’t cry. He’s just a baby.

Giuseppe V: I once had a child. Gone forever. The grief is overwhelming.

Claudio M: Still here? I was asleep for a moment. I have an interesting story about Ulysses. But not much happens.

Me:           Thanks Claudio, but that story would take us up to tomorrow morning. Whom have we not heard from? Yes, sir, go ahead.

Dmitri S: Me. A horse-cart, not with a chicken, to breakfast, my shoes.

Richard S: May I see your feet, then?

Dmitri S: Yellow.

Richard W (shouting from corner): The fate of the world, the destiny of life, and of love, and of all in the universe that the gods can behold, may rest on the words that we speak here today. My nation rises, supreme, as is due!

Gioachino R: Good God. Listen, I knew a guy in Algiers, and he had a ship, and some slaves, and two women that loved him…

George Frideric H: Still, I am here. I am here, in a chair. I am here. Still again, here, it is me. Jingle jangle.

Nannerl: Sorry, I have to take him out and change him, I think.

Wolfgang M (riding out in stroller): The turn of the century ushers in an age and a paradigm of newly complex harmonic counterpoint, a field of study, nay, implementation fully blossomed to fruition, yet my intuition suggests…

Giuseppe V: Fatal disease, and unknown poisons. Daggers through the heart, undeserved execution…

Vincenzo B: Death! An end it may be. But death with honor, with one’s head held high, as we march to the gallows, the fire, the precipice; this, we can say, is not truly an end, but a start, a reward, a gift to our children, their children, and on through the ages, to suffer so bravely, is but our goal, and the destiny, the ecstasy, of all.

Richard S: Where is that little boy? Can I look for him? My pants are off now.

Dmitri S: A government of fools. Awake!

Me:           Good so far, so then let’s get down to work. My first issue is, let us consider innovation in the world of opera. Who has an idea? Just throw out anything, let’s be creative!

Joseph H: My new idea is, what about a story about a guy who travels to hell to retrieve his lady and tries to bring her back? I have to leave now, boss is calling.

Giuseppe V: I wrote that already. It is tragic.

Gioachino R: Me, too. Hilarious.

Vincenzo B, Wolfgang M, Dmitri S, Claudio M, George Frideric H: We all did that. Everybody writes that thing.

Richard S: It was actually his sister. And they had relations, if I may say that.

Joseph H: Another new one, cutting edge, is, the woman can’t decide between jewels and wealth on the one hand, and true love on the other. Imagine!

Claudio M: Good god. They’ve been writing that one since I was a kid. And I’m really old.

Gioachino R: Hey Joe. Didn’t you say you had to leave?

Jaques O: Bonjour! I’m late! Very sorry, very sorry. Ha ha! Hello, hello!

Me:           Hello Jaques, empty chair over there.

Jaques O: Surprise! I was dining with a woman, and mon dieu! She turned out to be a windup robot! Imagine! Blew all to pieces! Ha ha!

Dmitri S: One nose?

Gioachino R: Sit down. Drink some of this.

Giuseppe V: Again, a sorrowful ending.

Richard W (shouting from corner): Fate! This is the way of the world!

Me:           Time to move on. Next topic. But still, it looks like we are missing Giacomo P.

All:           (Silence)

Me:           Okay then, I don’t know where Giacomo would be, and it’s getting late.

All:           (Silence)

Me:           Um. Kind of slowed the flow, I guess.

Gioachino R: Bastard.

Richard W: He is in hell for eternity.

Jaques O: I mean, I know that guy, but, why would you invite him?

Vincenzo B: Neither lyrics, nor music, nor stories of substance; he lives with no gifts, nor shares of the same, we can see, this we know, he is crap.

Richard S: He was my lover. Once we met in Hamburg, and…

Me:           Yes, yes, enough, okay, I actually wasn’t sure, about this Giacomo guy. Let’s move on.

Dmitri S: The bright worm, the withered apple.

Richard S: Later, I composed a leitmotif about his climax.

Wolfgang M (rolling in): I’m back. Giacomo is a genius. Just watch, and learn.

Gioachino R: Dope.

Me:           Alright everybody, let’s regroup here. This is taking a little longer than I expected, but I think we can catch up. Now, next topic. I’d like to gather some feedback on the subject of modernistic settings, for the traditional stories.

George Frideric H: Modern, as in, like a castle that has a latrine?

Claudio M: Themes of Byzantium?

Richard W (roaring, from the corner): The apocalypse, you fools! Demigods, warring to oblivion!

Me:           No, no, not exactly. You know, like, the standard love triangle, with a king and a lost princess in disguise, the forbidden love of the wife of a political rival, that stuff, but then you do it with Bitcoin.

Jaques O: Va te faire foutre! That won’t work.

Gioachino R: God. But of course. On Mars, riding a commercialized Hyperloop, and the soprano is actually a quantum semiconductor. More wine, anyone?

Richard S: Anatomical realism, performing natural human functions, for a backdrop.

Dmitri S: On the staircase.

Me:           Thanks for that, there, Dmitri S.

Dmitri S: The staircase. Regard.

Giuseppe V: Doom! As foreshadowed!

Me:           You too, Giuseppe V, take it easy now.

Vincenzo B: Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Draw back in fear!

Me:           What the…. Oh, God. Oh God, the blood! Don’t move! Jesus! Don’t move, anybody. Who the hell are you? Stay right there on the staircase, with your bloody pajamas.

Gaetano D: No, I did not wish to attend. I did not, yet I was forced. And now, and now, you see how I am!

Me:           Somebody call for help. Who is armed?

Wolfgang M (from stroller): I have a little sword in here.

Gaetano D: Against my will, I tell you, I have come to this place. It was my cruel wife, and my brother with her, she has driven me to this. Stand back in fear, and tremble.

Me:           Stay seated, everyone. He’s got a gigantic knife.

Gaetano D: See here, see here the blood. No choice had I, in truth, as I did not choose to marry, to take her for my wife. Stand I now upon the staircase, yet my cruel wife is no more. This blade, this steel, has done today its fateful work.

Gioachino R: Why talketh he like such? This guy’s nuts. Hey, Don, come have a drink, on me.

Vincenzo B: He is, he is indeed, far over the edge, beyond all human sense and reason. Behold, the syphilis exacts before us, its terrible toll, and we weep.

Richard S: He has syphilis? I wish he had told me before we…

Gaetano D: And now I seek a place where pain no longer does endure, wherein I bear no more, the trials brought upon my soul in earthly life.

Gaetano D: (stabs deeply)

Richard W (from an even further corner): The prophecy of the ancients has come to pass! This mortal lives but minutes more!

Claudio M: No way. Gushing stab wounds can take hours. He could be talking, or singing, for a really long time. We all know that.

Gaetano D (stepping down from the stairs): Is it you? Are you my beloved Lucia-Giulietta-Carmen-Violetta-Gilda-Manon-Nedda-Tosca-Leonora? (Could you possibly shorten your name at all?) Shall we dance?

Richard S: Yes, Yes! Even with all the icky blood! I’ll get my dancing slippers.

George Frideric H: Strike up all five harpsichords!

Dmitri S: Woof, woof. Bow wow.

Jaques O: And now for a lively gavotte!

(Cancan music; blackout and curtain.)