Dizozza/Dante Afterdeath Description and Essay -- Also posted in Declare and Shape

LISSA MOIRA DESCRIPTION: The Afterdeath, a mini opera by Peter Dizozza, is a surrealistic take on the 5th Canto of Dante’s Inferno employing fabulous voices, in which oddly enough (unlike in Dante’s version) love manages to stand up to everything, even the second circle of hell. A Biblical Supplement Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (published in 1321), which he divided into three books, Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, is one man’s attempt to establish order in an afterlife. His attempt is so vast that it melds into and becomes part of the theology that inspired it. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost (circa 1670), defining the heaven of God and his Angels as a prequel to Genesis, Dante's Divine Comedy embeds afterlife doctrines (including those from Greek “Mythology”) onto one of the major sects of Judaism, Christianity. The 5th Canto of Dante's Inferno describes people who let reason (of their minds) be guided by lust (of their bodies), a sin of incontinence. Dante assigns them to the 2nd ring or circle of hell, which is actually the 1st ring to contain a sin. The inferno's 1st ring is Limbo, which is where those who died without receiving the original-sin-cleansing sacrament of baptism go. Dante distinguishes Limbo from the bigger Purgatory as follows: Though people in Limbo may be good, they can never get on the track that can lead from purgatory to paradise. However, legend has it that on the day after his crucifixion, Jesus Christ, went to Limbo, bearing upon himself the weight of humanity's original sin – the eating of a forbidden fruit? While in Limbo Jesus (graciously) released into heaven many of the top leaders from the “old testament” portions of The Bible. Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, the adulterous lovers who join the hurricane of lost souls in our mini-opera, The Afterdeath, were contemporaries of Dante. While alive, Francesca and Paolo succumbed to their mutual desire while reading about Lancelot and Guenevere, from a version of the King Aurthur legends which originated in the 12th Century to be eventually played by Robert Goulet and Julie Andrews in Lerner and Lowe's musical, Camelot. Dante's portrays the adulterous lovers with sympathy, as does composer Peter Tchaikovsky, who wrote for them an orchestral fantasy (Opus 32). Tchaikovsky's music ends with cymbal crashes that wash away the sonority of the orchestra with a shimmering splash. For the more serious sin of violence Dante reserves a place for their murderer, Giovanni Maletesta, in the 7th ring of hell, the boiling river of blood. And now, here they are direct from Canto V of Dante's Inferno, it's Giovanni, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini in The Afterdeath.