Eden In Atlantis

By Derek Strahan

20,000 years ago, the earth’s axis was much closer to the perpendicular. There two moons. There were no seasons. It was paradise. The earth basked in eternal summer, many life forms flourished, including humans. What is now Antarctica was not then ice-bound and frozen at the Pole. It was then called Celestium, it was populated and harboured an advanced patriarchal civilization that eventually became the model for Atlantis, on an island in the Atlantic. But first that island is home to a community called Eden, a community organised on matriarchal principles, ruled by a Queen, where inheritance is matrilineal. The island is lush, fertile and an abundant variety of life forms flourish, including large and dangerous predators among which are found small colonies of dragons (dinosaurs) that are slowly being hunted to extinction. The warrior/hunter class, comprising both males and females, has high status. The community and its sacred places are walled for protection. Into this isolated community a stranger is thrust, banished from his homeland, Celestium, for the crime of revealing dangerous secrets to the common people. The stranger’s name is Lucifer, which means “light bringer’. He is a scientist with special knowledge of crystals. Eva is a young woman who falls in love with a young man, Daemon. In so doing Eva frustrates the ambitions of the Queen’s son, Adam, whose ambition is to usurp his mother, and rule Eden with Eva as his consort. Lucifer also loves Eva, but discreetly, from a distance. Using his science Lucifer is able to predict the cataclysm that is about to bring devastation to Eden. The political intrigues in Eden are subsumed by celestial events, but not before Lucifer is able to pluck Eva from captivity and bring her to his high mountain cave where they are safe, and from which they observe the comet collide with the smaller moon and, amid tumultuous storms and vast tidal waves, rain fire and debris on Eden. Humans are thus barred from Paradise because Pa

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781618423146

Derek Strahan

Derek Strahan is a Springfield resident and the author of the blog "Lost New England." He is a graduate of Westfield State University with degrees in English and regional planning, and he teaches English at the Master's School in Simsbury, Connecticut.

Book preview

EDEN IN ATLANTIS

A Music Drama by Derek Strahan

Being the scenario for an original theatre play, or film, or music drama for multimedia. The play and/or the music drama consists of a Prologue and three Acts.

COMPOSER’S COMMITMENT

Music drama is the term used by Richard Wagner to apply to his own operas, for which he wrote his own libretti, to distance them from previous operas. They all proceeded by a series of set pieces – arias, choruses, recitatives – whereas his innovation was to write music drama in an ongoing continuous stream. Other innovations followed: a new theatre (built at Bayreuth) was needed to apply his ideas of staging, which included dimming the lights in the auditorium to heighten the onstage drama. He also commissioned new musical (brass) instruments to accommodate his compositional needs. Composers are still drawing on his ideas and his approach in conceiving music for film. The other term he applied to his work was music of the future. The future has shown this to be no fanciful exaggeration.  I have clearly been influenced by Wagner in choosing to plan, and hopefully before too long, to write a four-opera cycle on a similar kind of eschatological theme – the end of all things – to that treated in Wagner's  The Ring of the Nibelung. Many think that I am mad, silly or presumptuous to have embarked on this project, but it will not let go of me. I think the theme has contemporary relevance, perhaps even more so than it did in 1848, the year Wagner made his first prose sketch of The Ring. I began writing development Atlantis works in 1992 at the age of 57. Nearly 20 years later, at age 76, I continue the work. My only presumption, based on a belief in the efficacy of free will, is that these operas already exist further along the space-time continuum in a series of related events, written by me, otherwise I would not wish to write them. I am merely travelling through time towards those events.  I assume that I will be preserved to fulfil the allotted tasks, hopefully not ending up looking too much like a dried fruit! The music drama that follows contains placement indications for musical content; but it is written as the play from which a libretto can derived. It is written to be read, to be staged live or to be filmed and some music for it already exists. I hope you enjoy it. Sequels will follow providing music dramas for the three remaining (intended) operas: Poseidon In Atlantis, Calypso In Exile and The Fall of Atlantis.

All Rights Reserved Copyright (C) 2001 Derek Strahan

ISBN: 9781618423146

Derek Strahan, Composer/Writer

Revolve Pty. Ltd. t/as New Music Theatre

PO Box 422, Cronulla,

NSW 2230, Australia

Ph/Fax: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website:  http://www.revolve.com.au

Eden in Atlantis

Scenario for an original music drama for multimedia by Derek Strahan

INDEX – with ‘go to’ links

Annotations

Music Drama for Multimedia

Audio CDs of Atlantis music by Derek Strahan

Community context  & Cast of characters

Sets/Visual FX

Chronology: a muddle deconstructed

The Music Drama

Detailed scene-by-scene synopsis

Conceptual Summary of the Libretto

Prologue:

Text preface to the Prologue & Act One: notes on Antarctica, Eden, Lucifer, Lenses

Overture (extra-musical context – a journey through time & space)

Prologue: Scene 1. Lucifer is banished from Celestium

Act One:

Prelude: Luxuriant growth in the Garden

Scene 1. Eva and Daemon meet in a lovers’ tryst at the Garden of Solitude in Eden

Scene 2. Lucifer laments his banishment and his hopeless love for Eva

Scene 3. The absence of Eva and Daemon from a celebration is noted by Iahu

Scene 4. Adam has Eva and Daemon arrested

Scene 5. Lucifer ponders on how to rescue Eva, and perhaps also Daemon

Act Two:

Text preface to Act Two: notes on Dinosaurs

Scene 1. There is gossip over the arrest of Eva and Daemon

Scene 2. Lucifer demonstrates the use of the burning eye

Scene 3 Political intrigues at the trial. Daemon must lead the dragon hunt

Scene 4. The Contenders prepare to fight the dragon

Scene 5. Adam schemes to frustrate Lucifer’s plan to save Daemon

Scene 6. Adam’s shadow blocks the eye and Daemon dies killing the dragon

Act Three:

Text preface to Act Three: Lenses, Prometheus, Fire, Prediction, Astronomical time

Scene 1. In his mountain cave Lucifer explains to Eva about the new star

Scene 2. Adam conspires to kill Iahu and reign with Eva in her place

Scene 3 Adam and Ashur discover Eva and Lucifer embracing

Scene 4. Adam and Ashur abduct Eva by force. Lucifer rails against the gods

Scene 5. Lucifer schemes with Edenites to rescue Eva and frustrate Adam

Scene 6. The meteor approaches. The storm begins. Eva is rescued

Scene 7. Ashur refuses to kill Iahu and is stabbed by Adam who escapes

Scene 8. Lucifer and Eva observe the star colliding with Malkuth. Meteors shower earth. Adam seeks refuge with them. Lucifer tells Eva about Adam’s shadow. Adam hurls himself into the abyss below. Lucifer and Eva resolve they will be the Adami (‘first people’) of the new age.

About the Author

END OF ‘GO TO’ INDEX

ANNOTATIONS

MUSIC DRAMA FOR MULTI-MEDIA – WHAT IS MEANT BY THIS?

A brief overview of music theatre by Derek Strahan

Opera cognoscenti will find little that is new in the opening paragraphs here, but will perhaps allow account me some latitude to summarise known facts of music history so as to attempt to bring them into alignment with later developments in theatre, film and new forms of presentation made possible by new technologies.

Before the 20th century music theatre was divided into two main streams. The highest form of the art was grand opera which was through-composed (meaning that all words in the libretto were set to music and sung). Grand opera was understood to comprise both ‘opera seria’ (‘serious’ or ‘tragic’ opera), and ‘opera buffa’ (‘comic’ opera) though both of these terms began as informal designations, as used in correspondence between professionals.

Next rung down in the artistic pecking order were popular entertainments in which sung segments were interspersed with passages of spoken dialogue. In German-speaking countries (by the late 18th-19th centuries) these were known as ‘singspiel’ and were written and sung in German (whereas ‘opera seria’ was always written and sung in Italian). The Spanish ‘zarzuela’ has the same structure. Two of the best known German ‘singspiel’ are Mozart’s Abduction From The Seraglio and The Magic Flute, the latter having been written as a popular entertainment for performance in a Music Hall (as distinct from an Opera Theatre). These two works of Mozart neatly illustrate the dual nature of the ‘singspiel’, bridging popular and elitist forms of music theatre. Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’, though in style and content a grand opera, is, in fact, a ‘singspiel’ in two respects: the libretto is in German with spoken dialogue, and it has a happy ending! 

Beethoven aside, the lightweight ‘singspiel’ evolved into the German form of operetta, which was an established form by the beginning of the 20th century, and was adopted universally, resulting in operettas being written in most European languages.

Developments in music theatre in the 20th century were linked to the development of new technology, and to the increasing democratisation of entertainment by means of the phonograph, radio, cinema and, later, television. Thus, operetta, in the US, evolved into the musical, combining book (story and dialogue) and music (song & lyrics). The early musicals were closely related to operetta in story and style but, from Jerome Kern’s Showboat onwards, increasingly reflected modern topics (racism in Showboat) and absorbed the pop music of the day. Soon, with the advent of sound in cinema, movies drew on theatre for content, and, as a result, stage and movie musicals became increasingly co-dependent each helping the other to market the same product on stage, screen, radio and records. Lately, the co-dependent equation, though still applying, has been inverted, with product first developed as a film original, now being co-opted for the stage (42 Street, Calamity Jane and, inevitably, Singing’ In The Rain).

The role of the full-length animated cartoon in this evolutionary process has not (to my knowledge) been adequately acknowledged, in the sense that this form of entertainment is the only form of music theatre which is unique to the 20th century, since it is totally dependent for its existence on technology, and has survived into the 21st century with its format largely unchanged. Yet it has always been in the vanguard of development! The operetta style of music both in the soundtrack score and in the Churchill-Morley songs written for Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs quickly gave way to a more hybrid musical content (which was there from the beginning in cartoon shorts) reflecting evolution in Broadway stage shows and in pop music; and in the final years of the 20th century, the Disney studios moved well ahead of other music theatre establishments by creating product intended for simultaneous release in various media, namely, cinema, conventional musical stage and on ice shows. The use of the on ice format is of interest: the reason why it is an appropriate medium for re-staging animated drama is because the movement of characters on ice allows for almost the same degree of mobility displayed by the cartoon equivalents!

With digital technology animation has assumed a new role in film drama, since it is increasingly used to provide elements of ersatz realism, where success is measured not by the cartoon quality of the images, but by their ability to merge totally with photographic reality, a process epitomized by John Cameron’s Avatar, and now enhanced by increasing use of 3D, embraced by mainstream cinema to combat home