Space Opera

by Michael Kandel

BACK TO OMNI FICTION ARCHIVES

We are in the DNA laboratory near the spaceport Vuffon. White-bearded Doctor Cabrini is stirring one of the mitochondrial vats. "We will build a better race," he sings, "a race that aspires to nobler things." It is perhaps the most beautiful, loftiest aria Davidson ever wrote, and in both conception and sentiment it owes much to the final scene in Friedrich Windburn's Salome Unchained, where Terrence rebukes the witch Faffah. The good doctor lists all the evils of the human race: their frivolity, their cruelty, their addiction to watching various screens. Now that we have conquered the stars, he argues, it is time for us to conquer ourselves. Chuck, his son, enters to the blatant, mindless rhythm of disco, and says, "Dad, why are you spending all your time among these old test tubes and autoclaves? Come out and have a little fun for a change, why don't you." Chuck's idea of fun is going to a virtual reality arcade and plugging into some nth-generation pinball machine. Doctor Cabrini shakes his sage head and replies that people should devote their time and energy to the welfare of the species rather than to empty personal hedonistic pursuits. In the following duet, Doctor Cabrini reveals that he has made a great discovery: He has isolated the gene for aggression. When it is excised, universal peace will ensue. Chuck's rejoinder is, "Great, Dad. Then what do we do when we're invaded?" In this seemingly comical exchange, Davidson is expressing a profound existential dilemma: We must always remain beasts, to some extent, he is saying, in order to protect ourselves against beasts, for otherwise we will be conquered and killed by them and our kind will not survive. And yet, the philosopher asks, what really has survived, if we remain beasts? Lucas Fandera wrote, in the Charleston Herald, "Such is the genius of Harold Davidson's 'Aggression Gene' duet that we cannot separate the score from the libretto, the idea from the ludic weave and interplay of sound and words. The duet hits us in all its irreducibility, like a beautiful woman, like a boxing glove, like an unheralded shaft of enlightenment from a higher sphere." Chuck departs to indulge in his sterile and puerile diversions, while the old man, with a sigh, resumes his work — but a hooded woman, we now notice, has entered unannounced. Standing in shadow, she asks for a vial of cis-methylated ligands. Doctor Cabrini recoils. "That is mortal poison," he says. "Indeed," retorts the woman. "But you will give it to me, old fool, because I know how you raised the money to send your ailing wife to the state hospital thirteen years ago on the planet Turrizo, though it didn't help her goiter, did it, and I will tell everyone and his second cousin if you do not do my bidding. You will be ruined, ruined." "What a despicable individual you are," says Doctor Cabrini. "If you were not of the fair sex, I would say that you were Darg Bhar himself. This is his style." "I am — I will be — the mate of Darg Bhar forever." With that, she removes her hood, and we see that it is none other than Leila Ziff-Calder. Her grim resolution has made her pale. Her gray eyes flash with hatred. She sings, "I will stop at nothing to have him. Don't anyone stand in my way." The old molecular biologist straightens his back. He defies Leila. "No, I'm sorry. I cannot do what is wrong." She produces a laser pistol and without hesitation shoots him through the heart. "I warned you." They sing a fierce duet about morality. "One must never compromise," he sings, and she: "Circumstances alter cases." He staggers and falls, clutching his chest, and sings, "Now I will not be able to save the human race from itself. How untimely does this cruel violence tear me from the world." He sees, in a fevered dream, God Himself on His throne, laughing, for the Lord of Light is revealed, to the fading mind of Doctor Cabrini, as the Prince of Darkness. The violins and cellos build chromatically to a discordant tremolo crescendo sforzando with shades of Schönberg and a nod to Piston as the deity-devil sings, "Fate is a practical joke, nothing more, and all your nobleness is but fuel for my demiurgic mischief." Failing, dying, Doctor Cabrini sings as the violins play col legno, "I refuse with the last atom of my soul to believe in this black evil. We are made for more than ontological jokes. We must be. My heart, though alas it is punctured beyond repair, tells me so." At this juncture Davidson springs a most unexpected and unsettling device on the audience: he has an invisible chorus of chipmunk-helium voices sing, mockingly, "We are made for more than jokes, we are made for more than jokes." With this the curtain falls, the chipmunk chorus still singing, accompanied appropriately by a tin whistle, wood blocks, and an irreverent glockenspiel. At an early performance of the opera in a small, local opera house outside Berne, the infuriated audience came up on stage after this act, tore down the scenery, and injured some of the singers, one critically. "Blasphemy! Blasphemers!" they shouted. It was in all the papers of Europe, and a lengthy lawsuit followed. [next]