Space Opera

by Michael Kandel

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An orchestral interlude, with a gentle Wagnerian light show on mauve scrims, prepares a change of mood. When the curtain rises, we are back in the workshop of the Vuffon spaceport. The grease apes are hammering away cheerfully at a meteor-pocked hull, while Bobby, Petro, Fred, and a few others sweep the floor and polish the brass table lamps, for today the Governor of the United Asteroids comes to pay a visit. Bobby keeps his head low. We cannot guess at his thoughts or plans but we can see that he is troubled. Petro tries to engage him in conversation, but to no avail. Voices sound offstage, then the tramp of marching. It is the Governor's entourage. They are singing, "Make way for us, we are important." The processional music wells, and after a line of guardsmen bearing banners fills the stage, Darg Bhar enters with a flourish, in all his worldly splendor. He is dressed in thick furs and several gaudy necklaces. At his side is Bobby's sister, Bea. Bobby starts, riveted. He sees immediately that Bea is not herself. She seems drugged. Her eyes are dilated. She is wearing a most revealing black leather slit shift with funky decals. Has the nefarious Bhar already begun to work his lubricious villainy on her? Bobby clenches his fists. We can see that his hands itch for a weapon. "Ah me," he sings sotto voce, "I am in such torment. If I follow my almost irresistible impulse of indignation, I will perish, nor will Bea profit. And yet I cannot stand by and do nothing. Ah, if only the wise Doctor Cabrini were here to advise me." Bobby does not know that the molecular biologist is no more (and only now, do we learn that Bobby knew him in the first place). Bhar sings of his ambition to rule the system and someday even the galaxy. Though he is a villain, the song is compelling, for it speaks to the bully in all of us. His guardsmen join him on the refrain: "Power is a great tonic." Though the theme is grim, there is a playful undercurrent here of Gilbert and Sullivan. Davidson was a man of mercurial shifts and deep contradictions. Bobby manages to get his sister off to one side, and in a lovely, clever whisper duet — Davidson has each sing in a different key, which foregrounds their inability to communicate — Bobby sings, "I can't let you do this to yourself," and Bea sings, "I don't need your permission, I can do what I like. I'm a woman now." "Woman or DNA robot?" he counters. In answer, Bea goes into a curious, lame half-recitative that confirms Bobby's worst fears, "Woman, robot, what does it matter, when you've given everything you have to a man?" Hiram Buck argues that Davidson is alluding here to his third wife, Clarissa, who at that time was in therapy for an obsessive lust she had conceived for the family Schnauzer, which, nota bene, was a female. But even if such a thing is true, what does it signify? Sordid tabloid trivia do not explain great art. The composer's personal life may indeed have resembled a soap opera shambles on occasion, but his music was always the real thing. Bhar is about to sign a contract with the grease apes for them "to make his fleet as good as new," when sirens begin wailing. A courier rushes in with the news that the bints have invaded. Pandemonium ensues. The orchestra plays a frenetic, jumbled medley of snatches from Windburn, Stravinsky, Sessions, and Ives as the curtain falls. The curtain falls, but the fourth act is not over. We hear explosions, curses. The house lights do not come on. The smells of sulfur and ozone fill the auditorium. The singers and actors bring the bint invasion to the audience. Human soldiers and bint warriors grapple in the aisles. A man is beheaded right on the proscenium in a fountain of blood as the flutes and piccolos shriek in octaves. (In Köln some children were so badly frightened by this, that there were lawsuits. Davidson once quipped that his music seemed to have been performed more in courtrooms than in theaters. An exaggeration, but there is truth to the statement, for such rough commerce with the prosaic world speaks of the vitality, originality, and fundamental energy of Davidson's oeuvre.) [next]